Visualizing the Visible Dog

During basic education in veterinary medicine, anatomy is the most extended topic, because the various species differ substantially concerning shape and topology of organs. The same is true for the blood supply and nervous systems. Unlike in human anatomy therefore different atlases are necessary for the respective species. In addition, a veterinarian needs thorough anatomical knowledge is necessary, because he performs in many cases surgical interventions. Thus interactive 3D-models which on the on hand allow learning anatomy and on the other hand the rehearsal of interventions are perfectly suited for education in veterinary medicine. Motivated by the Visible Human Project [1] the University of Munich has therefore initiated the Visible Animal Project [2] for creation of high resolution cross-sectional images of a dog. These images are used to build a highly realistic volume model of a dog. For this purpose we use the VOXEL-MAN system [3] developed for the generation of interactive 3D-atlases of the human body. This paper reports first results of the veterinary application.