Thanks to these exact digital copies of corpses stored in cyberspace, doctors will make direct comparisons with the patient's real body, as Dr. James Mach of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said, speaking at the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), according to the British "Independent".
The technology to store 3D organs and tissues of the body - and in high resolution - already exists. Some medical schools are training future doctors to perform anatomical procedures on digital "cadavers" in the cloud, on screens and via the Internet.
Thanks to the touch screens, the aspiring doctor can handle the virtual corpse as if it were a real one, interacting with it through touch. In addition, he can see deep below the surface of the skin and rotate a part, zoom in, etc. Thus, a real virtual surgery is possible, without the need to perform anatomy on real corpses (which are also hard to find).
The US military, as James Mach said, is considering the possibility of starting to store full 3D images of soldiers' bodies in the cloud, so that surgeons on the battlefield can compare a soldier's injured body with his healthy and intact virtual body. In the future, it is not excluded that a doctor will be able to "download" in digital form a "spare" organ or limb (e.g. a leg in the case of an amputation) and then print it in the operating room on a special 3D printer.
1,600 digital hearts ready for experiments
In a related development, doctors in London announced that they have already stored 1,600 hearts in digital form on a computer, with the aim of developing new treatments. This is another application of "big data" technology, which is gradually transforming the field of health.
Scientists at Hammersmith Hospital and the UK's Medical Research Council, according to the BBC, have 3D-scanned the hearts of 1,600 patients, while also collecting detailed genetic information for each one.
Researcher Dr Declan O'Regan said the new method could reveal much more than standard clinical trials about the complex relationship between a person's genes and heart disease, which could help cardiologists tailor treatment to each patient.
Source: onliner.gr
