With the birth of the world first "color virtual human," China will become the third country that claims its own virtual human (VH) data bank following the US and ROK, sources with the No.1 Military Medical University said recently.

Comparing with the two earlier countries, China's VH boasts of three major technological advantages on body selection and treatment, precision of body sections and tissue coloring.

"VH No. 1" a Healthy Man

The first digitized virtual Chinese (DVC) project is jointly carried out by the No.1 Military Medical University, Institute of Computing Technology under the Chinese Academy Of Sciences (CAS), the Capital University of Medical Sciences and Huazhong University of Science & Technology.

As revealed, the first DVC is a 28-year-old healthy man of Han nationality from Hunan Province. He is 166 cm in height and 58 kg in weight, without any infectious or metabolic disease. He died in April this year and had voluntarily donated his body for scientific researches.

Sections Only 0.1 mm Thick

The main task of setting up the DVC data bank is to crosscut the body, from head to heel, into 16,600 sections, each photographed and analyzed. The original data will be put into computer and, after processing, form a virtual three-dimensional human body structure.

Chinese scientists decided, on the 174th symposium held November 2001 in Beijing that the thickness of DVC sections should be at 0.1 mm. They also proposed new design and assembly plans and decided the technological processing.

To Be Completed in One Year

How does the cutting tool look like that can slice a 166-cm man body into 16,600 transverse sections? According to academician Zhong, the tools researchers sorted out are provided by a Harbin cutting tool plant, which have been successfully tested on cutting steel, water melon and frozen New Zealand white rabbit.

The body for DVC has gone through primary treatment, with all tissues fixed by medicine, and put into an icebox of minus 70 degrees centigrade to guarantee its hardness.

Finally two sets of cutting tools were adopted, one for getting rid of materials wrapping up the body and the other for crosscutting. When the operation begins the body, in standing position, is pushed out from the icebox and the tool, hanging above, spins around to produce a section.

But we are not able to see the section cut off, because the slices, as thin as a piece of paper, are scattered into powders and disappear in the air when the tool spinning past. The whole cutting process, as expected, will take a whole year, still two years ahead of the schedule as previously planned for three years.

( August 10, 2002)