Visible Body is an iPad app that allows users to explore a 3D model of the human body. It differs from most anatomy resources by giving the user full control over the model by zooming, panning, rotating, and customizing the layers and structures – essentially allowing the user to virtually dissect the human body.

General Comparison to Anatomy TV

Visible Body:
When I learned about UCI’s iPad initiative, this is what I imagined it to be. It makes full use of the iPad’s interface: use a single finger to rotate, two finger pinch to zoom, and three finger swipe to pan around a human cadaver (offers both male and female views). You can highlight a structure for more information: for example, it will display a muscle’s function, agonist, and antagonist.

Pros:
1. Easy to use and fast to navigate – simple, intuitive design allows you to quickly and easily locate a structure and see its orientation in the body. This makes Visible Body a great resource for quickly looking up a structure.
2. Convenience – no internet connection needed.
3. Beautifully designed – stunning graphics make Visible Body a joy to use (and show off!). Over winter break, I pulled out my iPad and showed family friends Visible Body to demonstrate how I use my iPad at medical school.

Cons:
1. Does not contain some detailed/minute structures. Notably, it is lacking in lymphatics and fascia.
2. Takes more time to load than your average app; however, it runs very smoothly after loading.
3. If you have an external keyboard connected to your iPad, you will need to manually enable the on-screen keyboard in order to search the index. (minor detail)

Anatomy TV:
Although Anatomy TV has been available to us since the beginning of the school year, I forgot about this resource until asked to compare it to Visible Body. After some time exploring, however, I was very impressed by this powerful program. It not only features an interactive 3D model of a human body, but also quizzes, dissection images, and radiology images.

Pros:
1. Much more complete learning tool than Visible Body – contains clinical slides, dissection slides, illustrations, and radiology. The side-by-side comparisons of illustration and slide are very useful for learning radiology.

Cons:
1. Accessibility – requires internet and VPN connection, limited to 5 users, hard to find the resource link (this could be fixed by providing a direct link to Anatomy TV on the Anatomy page in Merlin). Needing to periodically log in again can get annoying.
2. When I did access it, it was often slow to load and operate (mostly due to slow performance of my older computer, however).
3. Learning curve – Anatomy TV presents a huge body of information, and some time is needed to learn to navigate the program. Every time I open Anatomy TV, I seem to discover a new feature.

Side-by-side:

Visible Body is most comparable to Anatomy TV’s “3D Real-time Body,” and the following comparisons will only address this subset of Anatomy TV. These programs offer the ability to manipulate and explore a three dimensional model of the human body.