Virtual human – a living cadaver – pushes boundaries of anatomical science(2018)

When Victor Spitzer, PhD, director of the Center for Human Simulation at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, talks about his friend Susan Potter, he often describes her as “persistent.” Persistent because she refused to take no for an answer when she volunteered to donate her body to his Visible Human Project. Persistent because, after he accepted her request, she kept pushing when Spitzer initially refused to show her the large freezer where he stores cadavers, and the equipment he used to grind them into slices nearly the width of a human hair. ‘We need to bring her back to life, to develop a living cadaver.’ – Victor Spitzer Now, almost four years after she died from heart disease, Potter persists in a most profound way. She’s been frozen, sectioned and sliced — all in support of medical education. And now she exists in 27,000 photos taken of her entire anatomy, which is gradually being assembled in high-resolution digital form. Deep within the Fitzsimons Building, Sp ... Read full article.