The Heart Hospital, London, commissioned Glassworks to create a functioning 3D model of the human heart. After 2 years of hard work, it is complete.
Through a chance meeting at a dinner party 2 years ago, Glassworks were asked to create a Virtual Heart Simulator that allows the user to interact with an animated, realistic, anatomically accurate, ‘virtual’ 3D model of the heart in real time. The brief required the operator to be able to control the orientation of the heart and make planar slices in any orientation through the heart on the computer screen. From these slices the operator would be able to show the anatomical relationships between the various internal and external structures of the heart.
This Simulator would produce a real-time rendition of a photo-realistic computer graphics heart that could be sliced interaxially on any plain and produce a completely authentic graphic ultrasonic representation of that plain instantly.
See video of the Heart, beating, after the break.
Serious CG: HeartWorks 3D Interactive Virtual Heart Model by Glassworks. CG Explorer.
This is pretty amazing but what about the high school classroom. I just taught this subject in biology and this kind of state of the art simulation would be nice to show the students.