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Part of NLM's Next Generation Internet (NGI) Initiative

As a participating agency of the Next Generation Internet (NGI), the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has presented 24 awards to medical institutions and companies to develop new and innovative health and medical projects that take advantage of the application and use of the NGI capabilities.

HDAC is currently participating in one of these awards, the Human Embryology Digital Library and Collaboratory Support Tools project headed by George Mason University.

WHY HDAC?
Medical image analysis and three-dimensional reconstruction is important in the research, clinical and educational domains. For human embryology, as demonstrated by HDAC, the limited access to the collections and the fragility of the source material has, in the past, been an obstacle to progress. HDAC policy restricts collection loans to outside researchers, therefore requiring researchers to travel onsite to study the collections. This makes it difficult to engage the resources of HDAC in clinical settings and hinders participation in the modern educational process.

DESCRIPTION

Using data from the Carnegie Collection of Human Embryology, the digital embryo library project proposes to demonstrate how leading edge information technologies in computation, visualization, collaboration and networking can expand capabilities in medical science for developmental studies, clinical work and education in the field of human embryology.

Collaborative workstations will be installed at eight project locations and interconnected over high performance networks operating at data rates over 100 megabits per second nationwide. This will create a collaborative/consultative environment in which medical doctors and researchers will be able to visualize and manipulate high-resolution image data for diagnostic purposes, clinical case management and medical education.

station
Imaging station located at HDAC

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Digitized embryo section