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The whole story
ABOUT THE ATLAS
The data shared on this website is made of several ingredients.
Each one of them is essential to the end-result
This story starts around 2013, when Kousaku Okubo and the team of 'BodyParts3D' create a beautiful complex model of human anatomy, made of hundreds of different objects, under CC-BY-SA license, for the 'Life Science Database Archive'.
In 2019, The 'Fipat' publishes the second edition of the Terminologia Anatomica (TA2-2019), as locked .pdf files, in English and Latin.
In July 2019, the version 2.8 of Blender is released.
In February 2021, Gauthier Kervyn progressively organizes these three elements together and starts completing them; six months later, Marcin Zielinski writes the python script to convert Blender into an Anatomy viewer; and Lluis Vinent imports the content of the .blend in Unity and creates the application.
In the same period Ana Teresa Bigio translates the TA2 in Portuguese and later Carlos Torres Villar adds the spanish version.
In May 2023, due to internal conflicts and a lack of means, the project is ended with non-consensual results.
The .blend
ABOUT BLENDER...
Considered for a long time as a 'difficult' program, Blender is now competing with the best 3D modeling programs on the market; its quality and the free license that characterize it make it the ideal tool for organizing and viewing these open source 3D anatomy files.
Since August 2019, a new Collection system allows to store the objects in a non-linear way, which is particularly useful to organize complex systems as the human anatomy.
...AND ITS USE FOR ANATOMY
In 2021, the models from 'BodyParts3D' have been gathered, remeshed and organized in a .blend file according to the latest edition of the Terminologia Anatomica (TA2); the missing parts were created; the vessels converted into curves, the definitions imported from wikipedia, etc.
During the autumn 2021 Marcin Zielinski writes the python script.
This script now includes a label system, a translation system, a definition system, cross-section planes with filter options, a group label system, a key color option, a comic shader option and a light version.
Z-Anatomy.exe
The APP
ABOUT THE APP AND THE WEB VIEWER
In November 2021, Lluis Vinent imports the anatomical model in Unity and starts building an app.
The app has extra functions as the hypertext that allows to jump from one definition to another.
It is currently usable on Windows 10 and will soon be directly usable on a website page as a Web viewer.
ABOUT THE DERIVATIVE PROJECTS
The anatomical content is still under development and may contain errors; every user is invited to report these errors through the forum of this website, a comment in the spreadsheet or a systematic review of parts of the anatomical lexicon.
The educational and open nature of the project makes it a tool likely to be used and pursued by universities.
In May 2022, a grant has been obtained by the department of anatomy of the University of Leiden to correct the anatomical content of the atlas and to create a(nother) web viewer; in partnership with the Universities of Maastricht, Utrecht and Leuven.
This program will start in September 2022 and end in August 2024.
The TA2
ABOUT THE NOMENCLATURE
The 'Terminologia Anatomica' is the international standard for human anatomical terminology created by the 'Federative International Programme on Anatomical Terminology' (FIPAT), a program of the 'International Federation of Associations of Anatomists' (IFAA).
It contains terminology for about 7500 human anatomical structures.
The first version (TA) was modified and reedited in 2019 (TA2-2019).
As the national associations of Anatomists do not produce any translation, here is an automatic translation of this lexicon that contains many errors.
This rough version was then used to verify each term, one by one:
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in French - by Gauthier KERVYN
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in Portuguese - by Ana Teresa Bigio
The other languages still need somebody to work on it.
The license
ABOUT THE LICENSE
Open-source licenses are legal rights defining the extend and limits of the intellectual property over immaterial goods.
They are usually opposed to the copyright restrictions and encourage the collaboration.
The different types of Creative Commons licenses are explained in this video:
Open development is based upon the principles of accessibility, community involvement and support- where code and meshes are freely available for review and use.
This approach that was once belittled- fosters rapid innovation and is now respected worldwide for the key benefits it offers businesses and citizens.
YOU ARE FREE TO :
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
UNDER THE FOLLOWING TERMS :
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
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