01 Friday Mar 2013
These bones were found in one of the burials excavated at the Royal London Hospital. It contained the body parts of several different people. Using 3D scans, we can see that the bones have been sawn, presumably to prepare them for use in anatomy classes. This video shows how we have put together some of the fragments.
This video is an example of material on show at the Doctors Dissection Resurrection Men exhibition at The Museum of London.
27 Wednesday Feb 2013
Posted in 3D scans, Bones, CT scans, Palaeopathology, Texturing
The video below shows some of the testing that Tom Sparrow has been doing with our CT data. It is a work in progress. The individual is a subadult from Chichester with some unusual endocranial bone changes. The video combines the textured 3D laser scan (scanned by Andy Holland and textured by Pawel Eliasz and David Keenan) with the CT data from Pinderfields Hospital.
Below are the palaeopathological descriptions written by Dr Becky Storm, plus the specimen selection photographs taken by me (Emma) during the early days of the project.
Frontal: There is a large area of bone destruction on the endocranial surface of the frontal. This lesion is located centrally on the superior and anterior surface,.There is expansion of the diploic channels transversely and perpendicular expansion of trabeculae through the endocortical surface centrally and superiorly within the lesion, with convoluted areas of cortical bone anteriorly and laterally.
Chichester 215 frontal and maxilla
Orbits: There is a diffuse convoluted mixture of bone destruction, new compact bone formation and expansion of the diploic channels on the right orbital roof and on an area of the greater wing of the sphenoid superiorly. The left orbit is covered in remodelled smooth new compact bone with areas of bone erosion and expansion of the diploic channels giving a convoluted appearance.
Maxillae: There is new compact bone on the nasal floor that has vascular pattern and extensive porosity near the right infra-orbital foramen. There is extensive pitting of the anterior quarter of the palate.Frontal- There is a large area of bone destruction on the endocranial surface of the frontal. This lesion is located centrally on the superior and anterior surface,.There is expansion of the diploic channels transversely and perpendicular expansion of trabeculae through the endocortical surface centrally and superiorly within the lesion, with convoluted areas of cortical bone anteriorly and laterally.
Occipital: There is a large area of bone destruction on the endocrinal surface of the occipital, posterior to the transverse sulci. There is expansion of the diplotic channels transversely and perpendicular expansion of trabeculae through the endocortical surface with irregular islands of unaffected cortical bone centrally and anteriorly.
11 Tuesday Dec 2012
I realise we’ve been a bit quiet of late, but to make up for this here are some really exciting renders of sawn and worked bone scanned by the team at MOLA. The bones come from The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel.
Both examples below are some of the things you can see at the Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men exhibition at the Museum of London.
21 Friday Sep 2012
Posted in 3D scans, Bones, JISC, Palaeopathology, Specimen Selection, Texturing, Uncategorized
… but a fellow sufferer of scoliosis (bent spine) excavated from Chelsea Old Church post-medieval burial ground in London, by Museum of London Archaeology Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA).
The image features the fused 9th to 11th thoracic vertebrae, as well as a fused right rib, from a mature adult female. It is taken from a high resolution 3D scan which has been rendered in gold to maximise visibility of the surface contours of the bones. She probably suffered from idiopathic scoliosis resulting in severe lateral (sideways) curvature of the spine.
The condition is thought to be congenital (genetic?) and usually manifests in childhood, so this woman would have been affected for several decades. The left sides of her vertebrae have fused together in an attempt to stabilise her spine. This image only shows a small section of her spine. When all her vertebrae are joined together (articulated), the spine forms an ‘S’-shape, which in life would have given her body an asymmetrical appearance with the right shoulder higher than the left.
This work forms part of the Digitised Disease project , a collaboration between the Biological Anthropology Research Centre (BARC) at University of Bradford, MOLA and the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS). It will provide a web based learning and reference resource for students, professionals and others. By scanning and reproducing examples of pathological lesions, both archaeological (BARC and MOLA) and from the collections at the Royal College of Surgeons, we plan to provide evidence of disease from populations who lacked antibiotics and other modern treatments and so present the full range of bone lesions that result from pathological conditions.
The two examples below illustrate 1. the scanned and 2. the textured 3D images of a right humerus of an individual from St Mary Spital medieval burial ground with achondroplasia, a form of dwarfism. On the first image, each colour represents a different ‘pass’ over the bone with the laser scanner. These are eventually aligned to form a single image. This is then used as a template on which to map photographic images of the bone in order to produce the final surface detail. This and further images can be found on MOLA Facebook, Twitter and blog pages.
03 Monday Sep 2012
- by Dr. Jo Buckberry
Every now and then I’m amazed at how much detail can been seen in the raw scans (before texturing). The other week I popped into the lab to ask Andy Holland something and was struck by this image on his screen, of the aligned scans of a cranial fragment:
What I saw immediately wasn’t the pathology, but rather was a post-mortem break which had been stuck back together many years ago:
Of course that’s easy to spot if you know the bone in question, but this could easily be mistaken for pathology based on the scan alone – which is why the texture photographs and pathological descriptions are so important. So, all in all, that was two positives to me – the scans do pick up lots of very small details, but the interpretation is so much easier if they have been textured – but in some cases a good description is essential too! I think that explains why our approach is working so well.
23 Monday Jul 2012
Now that the project is well under way we have had the time to put together some photos displaying the different stages we go through to get the bone finished.
We start by obtaining the point cloud information from the 3d scanners, and converting this data into a polygon model.
From this we have to hole fill the model so we can get it ready for Uving.
When the model is hole filled we have to UV layout the bone so we can start texturing.
Texturing can take anything from 1 hour to a few days depending on the complexity of the bone.
The images below show 3 stages of development. Not hole filled – Hole filled but not textured – Textured (Finished).
11 Monday Jun 2012
Posted in Cemetery to Clinic, Staff, Texturing
Last Week our two new placement students joined us on the Digitised Diseases Project.
Nick and Vel will be helping the Texturing team with post-processing. At the moment are working on finishing some of the models from “From Cemetery to Clinic” before commencing work on Digitised Diseases.
We hope they enjoy the project and welcome to the team.
12 Thursday Apr 2012
The project is well under way now here in Bradford and at MOLA. It is an exciting time, as we are now seeing the first finished textured bones of this project. The finished models will be up at the Digitised Diseases webpage in the coming weeks.
Below is a selection of some of the bones that have been textured. The resolution is much higher in the real thing!
02 Thursday Feb 2012
Posted in 3D scans, Bones, Cemetery to Clinic, Staff, Texturing
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Today we were delighted to welcome two new team members. Pawel Eliasz (who was one of the texturers from the first project) and David Keenan are full time texture technicians and will be based in Visual Computing.
They are responsible for filling in holes in the scan data and texturing the 3D models with high resolution photographs.
They popped over to Archaeological Sciences this morning to meet the team, including some of the more famous BARC skeletons. We thought it was important that they actually see a skeleton, so they can understand the realtive size of elements and experience bone colour and texture in real life, rather than just seeing lots of photographs.
Pawel and David meet Chichester 88
They also got to meet the laser scanner. Andy Holland talked them through some of the finer points of scanning bones.
David, Pawel and Andy talk 3D laser scanning
Welcome to the team guys!
