Digital images from the 1994 body scans of two cadavers have helped doctors screen patients for certain diseases.

The two cadavers (a 39-year-old male from Texas and a 59-year-old woman from Maryland) were donated to science and put to good use at the Visible Human Project at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. Both bodies received two scannings: a CAT-scan and an MRI. Their bodies were then frozen to 90 degrees below zero and sliced into very thin sections: the man's slices were 1 millimeter thick, the woman's slices were 1/3 millimeter thick.  Scientists then took photographs of the sections.  The scans and the photos helped create the computerized mummies.

In turn, computer software developed from the mummies now allows doctors to perform a "virtual colonoscopy" on patients in much less time and much more cheaply. And software is currently being developed to allow doctors to practice various surgical procedures--before the actual operation (kind of a trial run).

The software is now available. Visible Human CD Male 2.0 and Visible Human CD Female 1.1 cost about $495 for both and are published by Research Systems. Labeling of body parts is incomplete, however. So far, the software producers have labeled about 70,000 parts of the man. The woman's body parts, though, remain unlabeled. 

(From the Medical Tribune News Service and the New York Times, 7/8/99, "Computers Open a Window on the Body")