'Reading' cross-sections

Introduction

Background of the viewers

The Leiden Visible Human Viewer

The Visible Human viewer shows data from the VisibleHuman Project by the
American National Library of Medicine and the University of Colorado. The donor
was anonymous, reportedly a 59 year old American female who died of a heart
attack. The body was encased and frozen to allow a fixed position. This freezing
underlies the name for this technique 'cryosection'. 'Kryo' is Greek for cold. Slices
of 1/3 of a mm were grinded off the body and photographs made. The colours
thus are the natural anatomic tissue colours. In this way the transverse
photographs were made. The coronal and saggital slides are computer
reconstructions.
Many viewers have been developed based on the Visible Human data set, but as
far as we know, all require special techniques to work, don't allow fast scrolling,
need a login or are commercial. The Leiden University viewer is specially tailored
for easy online usage, working straight away in a browser, and requiring no login.

The Leiden CT Viewer

The CT viewer is based on a CT scan created by the Leiden University Medical
Center radiology department of a normal female. She is anonymous. As CT
scanning is based on X-rays, everything that blocks X-rays, such as bone, is
white. Also contrast matter is administered. Contrast blocks X-rays, thus the
picture will be white where there is contrast. The CT scan is made at the moment
that contrast is in the arteries and the abdominal veins. Thus the aorta and the
portal vein can be well seen as white tubes. At that moment the contrast had not
yet reached the inferior vena cava so it is grey and far less clear.

By O.P.Gobée, dept. Anatomy & Embryology, LUMC, Netherlands.

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International.
Tips for working with the cross-sectional viewer
General
• Use the biggest screen possible.
• The viewers can be found at https://moocanatomy.lumc.nl and
at http://www.caskanatomy.info/browser.
• Use an anatomical atlas to look things up.
• When necessary, use www.anatomicalterms.info to look up terminology.

Orient yourself first

Use the vertebral column to identify
ventral or dorsal sides of the cross-
section.

It is important to note that all

transversal sections are viewed from
the inferior (bottom) perspective (this
is standard imaging practice in
medicine). Imagine you are looking at
the ‘feet’. Knowing this, you can
identify left and right in the
transversal cross-sections.

Identifying the structure you are looking at:

• Use a structure you can identify as a starting point.
• Scroll up and down through the sections in the Visible Human Browser and identify
the structure, or move from a structure you can identify to an adjacent structure.
• The position in the body and the position relative to other structures can help, for
example, the liver is on the right, the spleen on the left.
• Tissue (color, density) is often distinctive of a certain structure and will help
differentiate it from other structures.

In addition:
• An artery has a wall with a certain thickness that looks like a white rim. The wall is
often slightly ‘messy’ in shape as a result of atherosclerosis.
• A vein has a thin, smooth wall and is often slighty wider than the accompanying
artery.

By O.P.Gobée, dept. Anatomy & Embryology, LUMC, Netherlands.

License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International.