Anatomical variations are naturally-occurring deviations from typical human anatomy. While these variations are considered normal and non-pathological, they are still of interest in clinical practice for medical specialists such as radiologists and transplantation surgeons. The complex variations in branching structures, for instance in arteries or nerves, are currently visualized side-by-side in illustrations or expressed using plain text in medical publications. In this work, we present a novel way of visualizing anatomical variations in complex branching structures for educational purposes: VarVis. VarVis consists of several linked views that reveal global and local similarities and differences in the variations. We propose a novel graph representation to provide an overview of the topological changes. Our solution involves a topological similarity measure, which allows the user to select variations at a global level based on their degree of similarity. After a selection is made, local topological differences can be interactively explored using illustrations and topology graphs. We also incorporate additional information regarding the probability of the various cases. Our solution has several advantages over traditional approaches, which we demonstrate in an evaluation.@en

The Online Anatomical Human (OAH) is a web-based viewer for studying anatomy. It is based on real human anatomy and incorporates medical image data in linked 2D and 3D views that students can freely interact with. Our application is the only to support 2D and 3D views based on real medical imaging data. The main goal of this anatomical online resource is to serve as an educational platform available to anyone with access to a modern web browser. Users can annotate regions, add comments, and provide hyperlinks to additional media. By making our work accessible to medical experts, we can ensure an increasing amount of information, leading to an ever-growing gain in educational value. The OAH will be used in an upcoming Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to teach anatomy of the pelvis and will be made available to students worldwide via the web. @en