[8][9] A primary goal of the project was to provide a testbed for the development of new technologies, and the refinement of existing ones, for the application of high-speed, high-performance computing and communications to current problems in biomedical science.
Sets of serial microscopic cross-sections through human embryos (prepared by Carnegie Collection contributors between the 1890s and 1970s) were used as sample image data around which to design and implement various components of the system.
[1][3] Image processing of these data was required to correct for certain artifacts that were found in the original microscope sections from routine histological techniques of the tissue preparation.
The VEP became a far-reaching collaborative research program involving a large number of eminent scientists across the nation and around the world, including, among many others, Michael Doyle, of UIC, then UCSF, and project founder, Adrianne Noe, Director of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, George Washington University's Robert Ledley, inventor of the Full-body CT scanner, UIUC's Paul Lauterbur, MRI pioneer and Nobel laureate, LSU's Ray Gasser, eminent embryologist, Oregon Health & Science University's Kent Thornburg, internationally renown developmental biologist, Regan Moore, Director of the DICE group at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, William Lennon of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Ingrid Carlbom of Digital Equipment Corporation's Cambridge Research Lab, and Demetri Terzopoulos of the University of Toronto.
Serial sections of the embryos, with an external registration marker system, introduced into the paraffin embedding process, were prepared by standard histological methods.
The external fiducial system facilitated the three-dimensional reconstruction by providing accurate registration of consecutive images and also allowed for precise spatial calibration and the correction of warping artifacts.
The atlases, with their associated anatomical knowledge base, were then integrated into a multimedia online information resource via the VEP's Web technology to provide research biologists with a set of advanced tools to analyze normal and abnormal murine embryonic development.
[17] The Human Embryology Digital Library and Collaboratory Support Tools project was begun in 1999 as a demonstration of the biomedical application potential of the Next Generation Internet (NGI).
Clinical management planning where medical professionals and expectant parent patients can review normal and abnormal development patterns with collaborative consultation from distant experts.
[9] To enable new ways to interactively explore the VEP's massive volume datasets, Michael Doyle created the zMap system, using the Visible Human Project image data for the first prototype.
In 2011, Doyle collaborated with Steven Landers, Maurice Pescitelli, and others to use zMap to create an interactive tool that allows the user to select desired sets of anatomical structures for the automated generation of 3D Quicktime VR visualizations.
[18] Over the decades since it was begun, the work done in the Visible Embryo Project has led to the development of several important technological breakthroughs that have had a worldwide impact: Even though spatial mapping of Omics data had been described as an initial goal of the VEP, it wasn't until 1999 that four VEP collaborators, Michael Doyle, George Michaels, Maurice Pescitelli, and Betsey Williams worked together to create a system for what they called "spatial genomics.
To create the underlying software and hardware that would provide the needed computational power for the VEP, Doyle's CKM group designed a new paradigm for performing remote client-server volume visualization over the Internet.
[24] In November 1993, the CKM's VEP research group demonstrated this system, the first Web-based Cloud application platform, on-stage to a meeting of approximately 300 Bay Area SIGWEB members at Xerox PARC.
The VEP team's work opened the door to the potential of the Web to provide rich information resources to users, regardless of where they were located and spawned a multi-trillion-dollar industry as a result.