WebGL-based interactive rendering of whole body anatomy for web-oriented visualisation of avatar-centered digital health data

Abstract

The visualisation of whole-body anatomy has a variety of applications in health-related analysis and simulation. However, the rendering of complex 3D human anatomy models is generally performed by standalone applications rather than via a web interface, as rendering large 3D models has always been a weak spot of traditional web browsers. Consequently, online access to, and exploration of, the human anatomy in 3D has not been feasible in the past. With the advent of WebGL and HTML5, high performance OpenGL rendering seamlessly integrated with the web interface is now within reach, and this opens the possibility of visualising avatar-centered health data via a web interface. In this paper, a WebGL-based prototype for rendering whole-body anatomy is introduced, and the technical details are presented.