Just wanted to let everyone know that an app we built using ZBrush launched to the App Store yesterday. Surgical Anatomy of the Liver is our first app at Emory.
We have a brief making of video, where you see me working a little in ZBrush:
[youtubehd]f4eCHLqqsv8[/youtubehd]
Happy ZBrushing,
Michael Konomos, MS, CMI
Medical Illustrator
Visual Medical Education
Emory University School of Medicine
[email protected]
We created our app for surgical residents and medical students. They normally have to learn the liver through CT scans (if you can imagine that!).
The liver is on the left, and we are looking at the body from the perspective of the feet. I used this image, among many others, as reference for the liver, as well as working with Dr. Shishir Maithel, a surgical oncologist that is a real expert on liver anatomy.
This view of the liver show the realistic texture of the liver, that we start the user off with in the app.
What I find interesting is that every liver I have seen in life is different, just as every human face is different. Slightly different shapes and colors make us all unique.
In order to prep them for Unity3D, I had to ZRemesh them and then paint on polygroups, which Unity3D can use as separate sub models when we have polygroups checked on during MM Exporter. We then used these sub models to allow the user to select each branch of the vessel and get a label for it, without creating too many draw calls in the process. Couldn’t have built the app without that ability!
Surgeons will sometimes remove parts of the liver without removing the whole thing, so they have to be able to imagine right where the vessels are.
Dr. Maithel and I would sit side by side in front of my Cintiq and he would give me specific instructions about the normal placement of the vessels in ZBrush. In realtime I would use the move tool or the move brush and change, ever so slightly, the location of a vessel to ensure it was in just the right place. Often we would have the position everything in the view that the surgeon was used to looking at the liver in - either a sideways view like in the OR, or more often the bottom-up view of the CT scan. Dr. Maithel was great to work with. Really passionate about getting the details right, and also really tickled by what we could do in ZBrush. I even let him try it out himself and he seemed to enjoy that.
great work! Love seeing it in the context of the app. I work for a medical agency right now and we’ve been drilling zbrush into our pipeline these past few months. Just lends itself so well to all the anatomy/micro detail work 
Thanks for sharing! 
I love the use of 3D graphics in science. I hope this will be the direction in which education will go.
Great work, congratulations.
Fascinating and great work - thanks for sharing.
Great stuff thanks for posting.
Very nice work!
