1. The South American “Visible Human” Mirror Site The Center for Biomedical Informatics State University of Campinas Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

2. SA-VHD Project Leaders n Concept and Supervision –Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD Director, Center for Biomedical Informatics Professor and Chair, Medical Informatics, Faculty of Medical Sciences, UNICAMP n Current Project Director –Francesco Langone, PhD Associate Director, Center for Biomedical Informatics Assistant Professor, Anatomy and Physiology, Institute of Biology, UNICAMP n Founding Project Director –Silvia Helena Cardoso, PhD Associate Researcher, Center for Biomedical Informatics Distance Education Project Coordinator Editor-in-Chief, Brain & Mind Magazine

3. The Location of VHD Campinas Southeast region State of São Paulo Tropic of Capricorn Subtropical zone 80 km north of S.Paulo

4. What is Campinas n Second largest city of São Paulo state n 15th largest Brazilian city n 920.000 inhabitants n Center of a metropolitan area with 22 cities and 2.5 million inhabitants n 4,500 industries Brazilian “Sillicon Valley” IBM, Compaq, Motorola, Lucent, Northern Telecom n 10% of Brazil’s GNP

5. What Is UNICAMP n One of the three best universities of South America n 18700 students (42% graduate) n 2000 faculty (90 % full-time, 80 % doctors) n 20 schools and institutes n 42 undergraduate and 120 graduate courses n 1000 dissertations per year, 6200 research projects n 5000 Internet nodes n US$ 530 million budget

6. The Center for Biomedical Informatics n Interdisciplinary research unit, founded 1983 n Advanced projects in AIM, distance education, virtual communities, electronic publications, image processing, multimedia. n Largest Internet health information site in Latin America n Masters and Doctoral post- graduate course www.nib.unicamp.br

7. NIB/UNICAMP Internet Projects www.hospvirt.org.br www.epub.org.br n The Brazilian Virtual Hospital n The Brazilian Virtual Veterinary Hospital n The Virtual Dental Center n The Virtual Sports Center n Virtual Health Sciences University n The e*pub Group

8. Medical Informatics Education n Since 1985 n Medical and Nursing undergraduates n Medicine and Biomedical Engineering graduates n Courses on Internet technologies n Courses on multimedia technologies n Artificial Intelligence in Medicine n Applications in medical education

9. The e*pub Project Editorial Production www.epub.org.br

10. Present Status n A contract with NLM was signed on October 1996 (Brazilian Embassy, Washington, DC) n Experimental server was set up in December 1996 –Sun Netrai with 9 Gb disk and 10 Mbps connection –Complete male head segment –HP RISC workstation with 3DViewNix –FTP service of raw and JPG images

11. Present Status n Digital 2000 Alpha Server acquired (donation by pharmaceutical company) –256 Mb RAM, 108 Gb disk –100 Mbps Fast Ethernet and 155 Mbps ATM connections –FTP service of full male/female VHD n Origin SGI workstation to be acquired –WebForce multimedia server –VRML server

12. VHD Dissemination Activities n Starting October 1996, participation in conferences, technical exhibits, talks and lectures in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay n Papers about SA-VHD on several medical informatics magazines n Interviews and reports with the press (main newspapers and weekly magazines) in Brazil and Argentina n TV interviews

13. Brazilian Internet Connectivity

14. Brazilian Internet Statistics n Access started in 1989 n 50,000 users in April 1995, limited to the academic sector n Opened to commercial access in September 1995 n Growth rate of 1,800% a year n Presently 2,500,000 users, 70% of Latin America hosts, main information provider south of the USA

15. Current SA-VHD Projects n SA-VHD Home Page (Portuguese and Spanish) since August 1996 n Use in public education (neuroscience on-line magazine - Brain & Mind) n Use in a Virtual Neurobiology Course (WWW) n 3D reconstruction (3DViewNix) - course and projects n Multimedia anatomic atlases - neuroanatomy and general sectional anatomy (WWW) n Automatic and semi-automatic segmentation of brain images using neural networks and polygon fitting

16. Brain & Mind Magazine www.epub.org.br/cm Using VHD images to teach neurosciences to the non-specialized public

17. Virtual Neurobiology Course Module: The Structure of the Brain

18. Multimedia Neuroanatomic Atlas

19. Virtual Anatomic Atlas

20. Characteristics n Developed in HTML and JAVA for delivery over the WWW n Self-study of sectional anatomy using the Visible Human frozen section image base n Interactive labelling of anatomical structures n Self-quiz mode

21. Development Methodologies n Platform-independent software tools n JAVA applets for local image control (zoom, brightness and contrast), structural identification and quizzing n JAVA scripting and cookies for contextual annotation

22. Virtual Anatomic Atlas

23. JAVA Anatomic Viewer

24. Anatomic Quiz Mode

25. Active Anatomic Notepad

26. Future Scenarios n Stepping up the dissemination of VHD in South America n DVD-based offerings of the complete VHD n Functional/Anatomic virtual textbooks for distance education support n High performance graphics applications (gigabit networking)

27. Contact Information n Renato M.E. Sabbatini Center for Biomedical Informatics State University of Campinas n PO Box 6005, Campinas SP 13081-970 Brazil n Phone +55 19 289-9800 n Fax +55 19 788 7130 n Email: sabbatin@nib.unicamp.br