Every one of the 1,659 parts of this body can be tapped, named and moved on its own. Of those, 414 show at the start: the skeleton, the heart, the windpipe and bronchi, the digestive organs, the kidneys and bladder, the spleen, the thymus and four glands. Muscles, blood vessels, the brain, the eyes and the skin sit behind their switches.
What each of the 12 systems holds
| System | Parts | What is in it |
|---|---|---|
| Skeletal | 281 | 203 bone parts, 28 teeth, 23 disks, rib and nose cartilages |
| Muscular | 422 | Muscles of the head and neck, trunk, arms and legs, with a few tendons |
| Cardiovascular | 656 | Heart with chambers and valves, 369 artery parts, 177 vein parts, coronary and lung vessels |
| Nervous | 135 | Brain: cortex, deep structures, brainstem, cerebellum and ventricles; nerves of the eye socket |
| Respiratory | 44 | Larynx, trachea and the bronchial tree |
| Digestive | 53 | Mouth, esophagus, stomach, intestines, liver in eight segments, gallbladder, pancreas |
| Urinary | 6 | Two kidneys, two ureters, bladder and urethra |
| Reproductive | 9 | Internal male organs |
| Endocrine | 4 | Pituitary gland, pineal body and two adrenal glands |
| Lymphatic and immune | 3 | Spleen and the two lobes of the thymus |
| Eye and ear | 43 | Both eyes layer by layer, eyelids and tear system, outer ears |
| Skin and hair | 3 | Skin, hair of the head and eyebrows |
Each system loads when its switch goes on, so the first view arrives quickly and the rest follows on request. All twelve systems together come to about 3.3 MB.
Naming a part and taking it out
Tap the left thigh bone. It turns yellow and a card reads Left femur, Skeletal system, Leg and foot, Left side. A short description follows, with the name of the book or agency it came from. Then come what the part belongs to (the left thigh), what kind of structure it is (a long bone) and its size in the model: about 47 by 12 by 6 cm.
Six buttons sit under the card:
- Zoom to it frames the part.
- Show only this hides everything else.
- Fade the rest turns the other parts to glass.
- Pull it out slides the part clear of the body. A drag then moves it anywhere, and Put it back returns it.
- Hide it removes the part until Reset.
- Copy link makes an address that opens the body on that part.
Bones, muscles, organs, the heart, the brain and the eye have written descriptions. Most were drawn from Gray's Anatomy of 1918 and the training modules of the US National Cancer Institute. The smaller arteries and veins show a name, a parent structure and a size only.
With a mouse, pointing at a part shows its name before any click, and a double click zooms straight to it.
Finding the liver and what lies around it
Type liver into the search box. The model holds the liver as eight pieces, and the list shows them: the caudate lobe and segments II to VIII. Pick segment IV. The view closes in on the middle of the liver and the card names it.
Press Fade the rest. The other seven segments, the ribs and the stomach turn to glass, and the segment stands alone in its place under the right side of the rib cage. Press it again, then switch off Skeletal system. Now the whole liver shows with the gallbladder tucked under it, the stomach to its left and the right kidney behind.
The National Cancer Institute places the liver "primarily in the right hypochondriac and epigastric regions of the abdomen, just beneath the diaphragm." It also calls the liver the largest gland in the body. In this model the eight segments together span about 21 cm from side to side and 16 cm from top to bottom. The organs view answers the same kind of question by side and level, and where the liver is covers the organ in full.
Turning, zooming and switching layers
A drag or a swipe turns the body in any direction. Pinch, hold Ctrl and scroll, or press the plus and minus buttons to zoom. Two fingers, or Shift with a drag, slide the view sideways. The round control at the side turns the body when dragged and starts a slow spin when pressed. Front, Side and Back jump to those views, and the home button returns to the start.
Body outline wraps the skin around the scene as glass, which helps place a deep organ against the surface. The pull-apart slider spreads every part away from the center, so close neighbors such as the eight wrist bones and the plates of the skull come apart. Save image downloads the view as a PNG.
Three narrower views start from the same body. The 3D skeleton opens on the bones and adds a naming quiz. The 3D muscles lay 422 muscle parts over the skeleton. The organs view fades everything outside one side or level of the trunk.
Where the model stops
The body is one adult male, about 172 cm tall, from the BodyParts3D project. Some structures a reader might look for are not in the data:
- Lung surfaces and lobes. The airways are there.
- The spinal cord and the nerves of the limbs and trunk.
- Lymph nodes and the thyroid gland.
- Female organs.
- The muscles of the face and of chewing.
- Four trunk muscles: latissimus dorsi, rectus abdominis, internal oblique and transversus abdominis.
- The ear canal, the eardrum and the three small bones of each ear.
Organs are single smooth shells without inner layers, except the heart, which has its chambers, valves and papillary muscles, and the eye. The model is a learning aid built from one body. Real bodies vary in size and in where their organs sit.