A new portal is allowing scientists and doctors – and anyone else curious enough – to fly through intact human organs in unprecedented detail, from the whole organ down to individual cells, in a form that researchers say could transform our understanding of human anatomy and disease.
The Human Organ Atlas (HOA), described as “Google Earth for human organs made available online”, currently hosts 307 three-dimensional datasets spanning 56 organs from 25 donors, covering everything from the brain and heart to the placenta and prostate. Crucially, the new platform can be explored through any standard web browser.
The implications of the atlas could be significant for medicine.
“Human organs are 3D and hierarchical in their structure,” Dr Claire Walsh, associate professor at University College London and director of the Human Organ Atlas Hub, told BBC Science Focus.
“This is the only database that I know of in the world that provides 3D hierarchical images of real human organs that can be accessed by anyone in the world.”
One early result has already illustrated the atlas's potential. Until now, scientists have only been able to estimate how many nephrons – the filtration units of the kidney – a human kidney contains, and where they sit in the organ.
Using the HOA's data, researchers can now see and count every individual nephron across an entire kidney, which Walsh said is a “really important marker of kidney function.”
In the brain, the data is already being used to improve the surgical placement of deep brain stimulation electrodes. Walsh explained that in the heart, researchers are studying defects present from birth.
In the lungs, the atlas is already helping scientists understand how COVID-19 and pulmonary fibrosis alter blood vessel networks.
The atlas was built using a technique called Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Tomography (HiP-CT), developed at the European Synchrotron in Grenoble, France.
It uses a light source up to 100 billion times brighter than a conventional hospital CT scanner, allowing researchers to image whole organs non-destructively and zoom down to below one micron – around 50 times thinner than a human hair.
"We are opening a new window into the inner architecture of the human body," Paul Tafforeau, the ESRF scientist who pioneered the technique, said in a statement.
“After six years of efforts, we are still only at the beginning. Currently we work on isolated organs, but in the future, we expect to develop the technique to be able to image complete human bodies with a resolution 10 to 20 times higher than what is possible today. Such data could transform how anatomy is studied and understood.”
Read more:
- Landmark ‘ageing atlas’ reveals how your organs change over a lifetime
- How many organs in the body could you live without?
- The weird reason only some of your organs come in pairs
