DVDs Go Deep Inside Body
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Robert Acland prepares a specimen during production of his video atlas of the human body.
It's used by medical students and doctors everywhere from Nigeria and Jamaica to Russia and Ethiopia—not to mention a lot of universities in the United States. It's Acland's Video Atlas of Human Anatomy, produced by U of L surgery professor Robert Acland.
The series of six videotapes details every aspect of the human body, giving practitioners inside, three-dimensional views of bones, muscles, tissues, organs and more.
Since their introduction in 1995, 110,000 copies of the tapes have been sold by distributor Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, according to Acland.
Now, Acland has produced a six-disc DVD version of the atlas that offers better resolution and greater flexibility in accessing the contents.
"The image quality between the videotapes and the DVDs is like the difference between night and day," says Acland, a renowned microsurgeon and director of the fresh tissue dissection laboratory at U of L's School of Medicine. "Navigability is much improved; you can access the index, click on what you want to see and bingo! You're there."
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Robert Acland prepares video lighting during production of his video atlas of the human body.
Introduced in October, the DVD version of the atlas is already "selling like hotcakes," Acland says.
"The most valuable commodity for a student is time," he adds. "With the DVDs, there is no more tedious winding and rewinding to try and find parts of the anatomy."
Absorbing vast amounts of information about the human body is one of the greatest challenges for young medical students. Acland says his atlas helps students learn and retain that information in an attractive and realistic way.
The tapes and DVDs are not meant to replace traditional instruction, Acland says. But they do offer a unique view of the human body using unenbalmed tissue that retains its natural color and flexibility.
The highly acclaimed series also has one major advantage over textbooks: Anatomical subject matter is presented in three dimensions using a unique camera technique that rotates the image around both the horizontal and vertical axes, as though specimens are spinning in air.
"The video atlas is intended to reduce the time required to understand human anatomy in three dimensions—and 'three dimensions' is the point of emphasis," says Acland.
"It's not too hard to understand anatomy in terms of chalkboard diagrams and two-dimensional images with lists of memorized structures," he continues. "But to actually understand what's where in three dimensions is an immense learning task. Few people can create a mental picture that's three-dimensional by looking at pictures in books."
For more information on the atlas, link to videoatlas.louisville.edu.
