Visible Embryo NGI Project Overview

The project focuses on providing a capability for medical professionals to communicate detailed information about development of the human embryo in a visual form. To achieve this, the project technical team will develop a network of medical collaboration workstations, using high-performance off-the-shelf networked computer systems combined with advanced software for collaboration and medical visualization. The workstations will be installed at eight project locations and interconnected over high performance networks operating at data rates over 100 megabits per second nationwide. As a result, medical doctors will be able to visualize and manipulate high-resolution image data collaboratively for diagnoses, clinical case management, and medical education. Also, genomics researchers will be able to use the system to map 3-dimensional patterns of gene expression on embryo datasets and analyze how they change through time.

The nickname "visible embryo" comes from the fact that the project will be using data from the Carnegie Human Embryology Collection of embryos held at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, DC. The Department of Embryology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington amassed and organized this collection from embryos contributed to it by physicians, who collected them upon mother's autopsy, miscarriage, or therapeutic termination of pregnancy.

The project plans to demonstrate the network of collaborative visualization workstations in three advanced applications:

• The Annotation and Modeling application will create an archive of tagged image data for visualization, where every picture element can be associated with any number of different labels, for example the organ system to which it belongs, the structure and tissue types represented, the specimen to which it belongs, etc. This will provide the basic archive that the other two applications will use.
• The Embryology Education application will make the visualization tools available for medical student use, and also will create animations of embryo organ system development. Software "morphing" techniques will be used to make a movie-like sequence of images derived from a selected set of embryos. Heart, lungs and caudal region will be modeled.
• The Clinical Management Planning application will make the data available in visual form so that a geographically distributed group of physicians can look at it simultaneously, manipulate it, and discuss it. This part of the project looks forward to a near-future time when it will be possible to draw on contributions to medical analysis and diagnosis by experts who may be geographically far from the patient's location (and from each other), based on expected improvements in imaging technologies.

• George Mason University of Fairfax, Virginia, which has overall responsibility for the project, and will provide collaboration technology.
• Armed Forces Institute of Pathology of Washington, DC, is the collaborating medical group that holds of the Carnegie Collection and will be responsible for capturing digital image data.
• Eolas Technologies Inc. of Chicago, Illinois, will have overall responsibility for software development including the advanced visualization system, information mapping system, knowledge management system, and groupware environment.
• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory of Livermore, California, will be responsible for arranging access to high performance networks, integrating the applications with the network, and doing network performance monitoring and tuning.
• San Diego Supercomputer Center operated by the University of California at San Diego, will be responsible for maintaining the medical image database, which will be one of the largest ever created, and for providing supporting software.

• Johns Hopkins University Medical School of Baltimore, Maryland, will have a leading role in the Clinical Management Planning application, and will be responsible for aspects of embryology dealing with the caudal region in all three applications.
• Oregon Health Science University of Portland, Oregon, will have a leading role in the Annotation and Modeling application, and will be responsible for aspects of embryology dealing with the heart and lungs in all three applications.
• University of Illinois at Chicago Illinois will have a leading role in the Embryology Education application, and will be responsible for aspects of embryology dealing with the upper digestive tract in all three applications.