This will be an interactive educational training opportunity about cardiac and human anatomy. One can study plastinated human hearts as well as 3D printed models generated from human anatomies within the Visible Heart® Laboratories of the Department of Surgery. The laboratories' library of human hearts was developed from organ donations received via LifeSource and the University of Minnesota’s Anatomy Bequest Program.
We will also have a Virtual Reality system, so one can tour through several cardiac anatomies from the library, as well as models developed from clinical cases. Additionally, a computer station will be available to introduce The Atlas of Human Cardiac Anatomy website.
The Atlas of Human Cardiac Anatomy is an interactive educational website created and maintained by the Visible Heart® Laboratories at the University of Minnesota. This site features images created from the Visible Heart® project, a novel educational tool that allows for viewing functional human cardiac anatomy from within.
We have created a library of freely downloadable Video clips which allows the user to visualize the beating human heart, all the valve actions, the contractions of atria and ventricles, and the architecture of the heart as it beats. This library of video clips includes those from over 91 human hearts that we have reanimated to date, as well as still images from additional human hearts that were perfusion fixed. That is, they were preserved so as to maintain their shape at the end stages of filling (end diastole).
These experimental procedures and research protocols were reviewed and approved by the University of Minnesota Institutional Review Board. Human hearts for this project were obtained both as generous gifts from LifeSource Upper Midwest Organ Procurement Organization, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota and the Anatomy Bequest Program of the University of Minnesota. This research is made possible due to the generous gifts of individuals whose hearts have been donated for research purposes. Their final act of generosity will enhance understanding of the inner workings of the human heart and contribute to lifesaving advances in cardiac medicine.