The SPL, together with Division of Neurosciences at Harvard Medical School, has been engaged in making a detailed morphological brain atlas since 1990. In collaboration with several other groups, this work is now being extended to other parts of human anatomy. Projects exist for the chest and abdomen, spine, pelvis, the inner ear, and the knee. As improvements in imaging technology continue, we are just beginning to incorporate other type of information into the morphological "landscape".

The overall goals of our atlas project:

• to develop it as a tool for education
• use it for pre-surgical planning and reference
• apply the anatomy as a template for segmentation by matching

Several papers have been published, discussing different aspects of the atlas project. They are listed in the bibliography below.

In order to make the information available for teaching purposes, we have developed java based viewers. Two viewers are available:

• The Anatomy Browser was developed by Mike Halle, Chris Umans, Polina Golland, and Ron Kikinis and allows to view 3D renderings and cross-sectional slices and to interact with them. The Anatomy Browser has minimal requirements for the viewing hardware and the network transmission speed. It is available for viewing on this page.
• SPLViz is a viewer based on java 3D technology. It is available for downloading. It requires significant graphics hardware support.

Biblography

Warfield et al. Adaptive Template Moderated Spatially Varying Statistical Classification. Proceedings of First International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI'98), pp. 231-238, ISBN 3-540-65136-5, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Eds. W.M. Wells, A. Colchester, and S. Delp, Springer Verlag, October, 1998. Boston.(100 kB gzipped PostScript Version).

Warfield et al. Real-Time Image Segmentation for Image-Guided Surgery. Abstract #1028 at the High Performance Networking and Computing Conference, November 7-13, 1998. Orlando, Florida, USA.

Golland et al . AnatomyBrowser: A Framework for Integration of Medical Information. Proceedings of First International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention (MICCAI'98), pp. 720-731.

Anderson et al. Anatomy Browser: Java-based Interactive Teaching Tool for Learning Human Neuroanatomy. Radiological Society of North America - Electronic Journal, Vol. 2, 1998. (http://ej.rsna.org/ej2/0050-97.fin/index.html)

Golland: Anatomy Browser. (http://www.developer.com/directories/pages/dir.java.educational.medical.3.html)

Umans et al. Multilayer Images for Interactive 3D Visualization on the World Wide Web. SPL Technical Report. September 1997.

Kikinis et al. A Digital Brain Atlas for Surgical Planning, Model Driven Segmentation and Teaching. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol.2, No.3, September 1996.

Shenton et al. Harvard brain atlas: A teaching and visualization tool. Proceedings:Biomedical Visualization 1995. p10-17.

All the data is available for scientific and teaching uses. Contact Polina Golland or Marianna Jakab for more information on obtaining the necessary data. See instructions for more information on how to use the applet.

Atlas Cases

• Brain
• Abdominal
• Ear
• Knee
• Knee reduced (170x170)
• Female pelvis
• Male pelvis
• Cervical spine
• Lumbar spine
• Spine

Clinical Cases

• Brain Tumor
• Sacral Tumor
• Pelvic Tumor
• Kidney Myelolipoma

Last updated July 20, 1999.