The Visible Human Explorer from Flashback Imaging is an innovative approach to fast and
interactive access to the full image dataset of the Visible Man and Visible
Woman. It is available in many forms and sizes, ranging from a simple CD-based
system to a full-scale 30-gigabyte version. In the last few years, the
stand-alone exhibit version with 30,000 images derived from the Visible Human
Project has been installed in a number of large science centres and museums in
Canada and the USA. We believe that the next logical step after public viewing would
be distributing. A distributed version of the Visible Human Explorer, with the same
capability as the exhibit version while having more functionality, would promote
and accelerate further usage of the Visible Human datasets.
In this paper, we describe the experience of working with the distributed version of the Visible
Human Explorer. A work-group, collaborative scheme for labeling and segmenting
the complete Visible Woman dataset will also be discussed. The approach is to
provide a customized software toolkit that allows widely distributed experts to
quickly and easily annotate individual slices while almost immediately
verifying annotations and changes with their colleagues over a wide area
network. Using a combination of local and remote storage devices, the same
collaboration can be extended to the entire network of the Internet. This
ultimately allows greater international collaboration and quicker access and
distribution of the information. Such a system is also suitable as a Next
Generation Internet (NGI) application.
Keywords:
Animation, collaboration, distributing,
Next Generation Internet, Wide Area Network.
