The good folks over at Venture Beat were able to get a great demo of Google Body being displayed on an Android Honeycomb tablet. Android 3.0, called Honeycomb, is going to be the newest iteration of Google’s Android operating system — and it’s optimized for tablet form.
The video demo given of the Google Body Anatomy app on the Android tablet is beautiful. The tablet (Motorola Xoom) is able to render the 3D images with ease, and multi-touch gestures are extremely responsive and appear fun to use.
If you have the opportunity, check out the online version of Google Body. You need a Web browser that supports WebGL — I ended up downloading the beta version of Firefox just so I could check out the online anatomy program. The program is great to use, and is extremely detailed, giving you the opportunity to view the musculoskeletal system, vascular system, and nervous system — all with detailed labeling. We have embedded a video after the Android demo video that shows how Google Body works in the desktop environment.
From the demo video of the Google Body anatomy app, the Google rep has stated some important things:
1) Currently only a female anatomical figure is available, they will be adding a male figure very soon
2) Google Body will be on Android Honeycomb tablets at release.
3) The anatomy app is fully searchable — e.g. if you type in “optical nerve”, you are taken to a 3D rendering of the nerve with great spatial orientation of surrounding anatomy.
4) The Anatomy app will be free
[Continue on for the video of Google Body on the Android Honeycomb Tablet and a video presentation of Google Body on a desktop]
Two immediate groups that could benefit from this app: Medical Professionals that want to explain key anatomical pathology to patients and medical students studying anatomy. Currently many medical professionals use Netters on their iPhone or Android to explain where key pathology is to patients — Just the other day I was working with a cardiologist who used Google images to display a sagittal image of the heart so he could better explain to the patient the mechanism of their cardiac issues.
The second group, medical students, could benefit from this app as well. By no means is this app going to replace a textbook version of Netter’s, but having such a comprehensive 3D rendered anatomical figure in mobile form could definitely be useful for studying — especially since it’s free.
We do have one gripe with the Venture Beat article. They state:
“This kind of app is a leap above what was possible on tablet computers just a year ago, and it shows you how fast mobile computing is changing.”
Just to be clear, many of these types of 3D rendering anatomy apps have been available for well over a year on the iPhone. Two quick examples are apps we’ve reviewed on iMedicalApps before, 3D brain and Pocket Heart — both were available in 2009, and both are customized for the iPad as well.
Source: Venture Beat
