Somebody in charge of pulling flickr illustrations for Wired's website has a good eye - they used this photo by Stephen Hampshire. A quick visit to flickr, and it turns out the photo is of Hampshire's homemade version of a DIY project originally described by Neil Fraser: a wooden cube brain map/puzzle. Fraser summarized his creation thus:
Last month I took a left-right MRI scan, reconstructed it, and rerendered top-bottom and front-back scans. It was interesting to manipulate the data and extract information which while previously present, was not previously visible. Another method to visualize a complex 3D object is to build a model. The dimensions of the MRI data cuboid are almost exactly 3x4x5. Accordingly, I obtained 60 one-inch cubes (it's the USA, forgive the Imperial measurements), arranged them appropriately, varnished the 94 outside faces, printed nine carefully selected cross-sections and their mirror images, sliced the prints into 266 squares and glued them to the correct internal faces.
And let me say, that is one retro-chic brain map there! Very nice indeed~
Via Wired (and the article was interesting, too!)
That's quite an impressive piece of work.
Very cool... I want one for my brain!
That's awesome! How could we incorporate something like that into an anatomy lab practical?
They'd be great for lab practicals. I think Tom should make a bunch of these - they're right up his alley! :D
Excellent! I should get me one of these MRI for just the purpose of doing this project...