BOSTON – Google recently released a demo of its latest project, Google Body Browser, a detailed, 3D-model of the human body. Similar to how Google Earth enables people to explore the world, Google Body Browser enables a viewer to peel back anatomical layers, zoom in, and click to identify anatomy, or search for muscles, organs and bones.
“What’s remarkable about Google Body is the ability to view and navigate through 3D information about the human body from a browser without plug-ins,” said Steve Vinter, site director for Google’s Cambridge, Mass., office.
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“We believe it will make this information much more accessible than it has been in the past, and it will create new opportunities for users and medical professionals to view it,” Vinter continued.
The application was launched as part of Google Labs. “Since Google Body is stored in the cloud, it can be accessed from anywhere and it offers the potential to share and collaborate in ways that are possible with other Google applications,” Vinter said. “We’re eager to hear ideas from users and professionals about how the application can be more useful.”
The tool, which was described in The New York Times as “a ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ coloring book, come to life,” is so new that a number of health professionals in Rhode Island said they were unfamiliar with it, and were unable to comment about its possible educational applications, as well as its ability to improve patient-care provider communications, and create a better-educated consumer.
But Philip A. Gruppuso, a professor of pediatrics and molecular biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry, and associate dean for medical education at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University, said he has yet to view Body Browser himself, but that it has caught the attention of his students.
“I haven’t gotten to it, but Body Browser was definitely discovered by our first-year students,” Gruppuso said. “There was a series of e-mails among students on our first-year listserv about Body Browser. Several students immediately recognized its value as an enhancement to our gross anatomy course. … I fully expect that Body Browser will be widely used by students as an adjunct to the dissection of a cadaver, a task that they all perform during our very intensive and rather traditional [by design] first semester course.”
