“India Anatomy Project” umbrella

Tools available for teaching anatomy span cadavers, artistic illustrations, and software with inbuilt digital anatomical models. Cadavers are not widely available, and artistic as well as currently available digital models lack certain realism. Furthermore, these models are rigid and do not allow visualization of variations. In addition, these models are closed in nature and are not able to be used beyond the purpose they were designed for, whether it be specializing models for a population, ingraining physiology, growing pathological conditions, or simulating surgical procedures.

Hence, this call for projects is issued to invite interested teams to build detailed and open anatomical models.

Scope

We seek to develop both gross and detailed anatomical models at the macroscopic level. These models must include all organs’ shapes suitable for realistic surface visualization -- as in endoscopic video or in physical dissection. This requires surface color, which may be applied with the help of a graphics texture and surface parameterization. In addition, the representation should allow animation so that natural motion like heart-beat may be visualized. Concomitantly, dissection of organs and simulation of radiological scans should be possible. Thus, models must include both volume and surface based representations. In addition to the bare geometry, the models must also be able to incorporate an extendable number of annotated properties like names, dimensions and their normal ranges, hardness, etc.

The models will not be patient specific. However, population based visualization should be possible. This means that it must be possible to specialize models by age, gender, weight, and height. Additionally, it should include reproduction of common variations in anatomy. These may be in shape, size, appearance, relative position, etc. Some of these variations can come from real patient data. Others can come from statistical models.

Realism of the produced models is critical. Hence, it is expected that artistically modeled shapes will not suffice for this effort. That suggests derivation of such models from a population of CT, MR, and Angiography scans, as well as endoscopic and microscopic camera images of live tissue. Generation of shapes from such scans entails segmentation, which remains a manually intensive process on the ground, in spite of many automated and semi-automated techniques in the literature. Tools for automated processing of these images to generate anatomical models is also within the scope of this call.

It is envisioned that multiple teams may collaborate to build a complete anatomy reflective of the Indian population. A team may work on the entire anatomy, a single system or parts of a system. The focus for this call is on the Nervous and Cardiovascular systems, given their prominent role in teaching. Irrespective of the part of anatomy a team seeks to work on, all parts must integrate into a common model. This implies that all parts should be able to employ a common format and include the ability to scale and co-register with the rest of the platform.

Participation Requirement

Participation is invited from entities with technical competence and experience in anatomy, image segmentation, modeling and rendering. Here are specific details:

Who can submit a proposal under the call?

• Proposals can be submitted by principal investigators (PIs) and and co-investigators (co-PIs) belonging to:
  • Indian industry (big industry or startups)
  • Indian academia
  • Indian hospitals
    Teams may include investigators from one, two, or all three categories above. Expertise in all parts of the proposed project should be represented in the Team.
  • Faculty of academic institutes
  • Scientists from Research Laboratories
  • Individual experts who can implement the project in an institution/SIRO Recognized lab etc.
  • Startups & MSME's with established credibility
  • COP can also be addressed to person/entity of acknowledged success in the problem area (based on past works)
• All PI and Co-PI details have to be present in the proposal at the time of submission, and the choice of each partner in the project must be justified by their experience and the work that they propose to undertake in the project.

Project specifics and deliverables

1. The proposal must include a detailed work division and plan, including final integration and delivery.
2. The proposal must include six-monthly detailed budget estimates for the entire duration of the project.
3. Complete representation of the selected parts of the anatomy must be covered by the proposal. (This includes projects on developing tools for automated processing of images to generate anatomical models.) In addition, open visualization software demonstrating the details of the delivered anatomical model must be included as a deliverable.
4. The proposal must include a presentation of the source of data and the methodology used to convert that data into the shape models. (Radiological devices for data collection or payment to subjects will not be funded by the proposal.)
5. All the software created during the project must be well documented as per community standards, unit tested and maintained using versioning tools like Git.

Project Budget and Duration

1. The proposal must contain a detailed description of the budget required for the overall project, and its division by partner and budget head.
2. The project will be awarded for two or three years, with regular monitoring as outlined below.

Project Monitoring

1. A project advisory and monitoring sub-committee will be formed from the TIH AR/VR vertical core committee. They will review the submitted proposals, and monitor the project once it is awarded.
2. The project will be subject to regular review by this committee every six months. The budget of the project will not be released for the subsequent half-year, if the project fails to meet the milestones and deliverables of the current half-year.

Project Submission

Deadline of submission of proposal: 15 January 2022.