What you’re looking at above is Google Body Browser, an experiment from Google Labs that leverages the WebGL graphics standard from the latest Chrome 9 browser beta to model the human body and all of its intricacies in 3D.
Here’s how Google describes it:
“Body Browser is a detailed 3D model of the human body. You can peel back anatomical layers, zoom in, and navigate to parts that interest you. Click to identify anatomy, or search for muscles, organs, bones and more.“
Not only that but users — and I envision those to be medical students or even those studying physiology in high school and college — can share the exact body model with fellow students by copying and pasting the URL. Perfect for group projects.
I’ve been playing with this simple tool for the last half hour and came away impressed that I was able to use the 3D tool so easily on a 4-year-old workhorse laptop that is already memory challenged.
That’s the beauty of playing in a newfangled Web browser leveraging Web GL, which Kronos Group notes: “WebGL brings plugin-free 3D to the web, implemented right into the browser.
You just let the app do the heavy lifting. Note the navigating bar on the left, offering users to narrow their 3D body browsing to muscles, bones, organs, etc. I selected the muscles icon and saw this:
Suppose you want to isolate a specific muscle. I moused over the 3D graphic and saw this:
You can also surface all of the organs and bones for the front, back and sides ofthe bod as you rotate around. Try it out!