Interactive Scientific Publishing (ISP) has been developed by the Optical Society of America with support from the National Library of Medicine at NIH. It allows authors to publish papers which are linked to the referenced 2D and 3D original image datasets that can then be viewed and analyzed interactively by the reader. ISP provides the software for authors to organize and publish source data while offering readers the viewing and analysis tools. The ultimate goal of ISP is to improve learning and understanding of the information being presented. The results reported here are intermediate in reaching the ultimate goals. Goals: Implement and evaluate online user access to interactive datasets that complement online scientific papers. Methods: Software development; website evaluation, including web log data monitoring, online user survey. Results: An expert group of respondents found the interactive data component to have positive impacts on understanding and discovery. However a significant minority reported that the software interface, instructions, and/or download presented a barrier to effective use of the interactive data functionality. Conclusions: This exploratory study indicates that interactive datasets offer potential benefits as a complement to published papers, but that further software improvements and more in-depth evaluation are needed to best discern future directions.

The Visible Human has come through ages, providing a foundation of photorealistic anatomy for learner-centered, interactive education. Pathways for improvement of the Visible Human process for reverse engineering the macrostructure of the human body have been developed to provide higher resolution and decreased production time for segmentation and modeling human form. The assignment of physical properties, the development of algorithms for the interaction of surgical tools with this virtual anatomy and the availability of high-fidelity haptic interfaces provide the basis for fully immersive surgical training and certification in an environment that is zero direct-risk to patients. Interactive journal publishing, 3D stereoscopic anatomical visualization software and surgical simulators, all based on the Visible Human, the history of the Project and its utilization and provide a framework for its evolution and role in delivering education, training, certification and credentialing through virtual reality to the health care workforce of tomorrow.

The National Library of Medicine and its partners are sponsoring Insight, a public software toolkit for segmentation and registration of high dimensional medical data. An essential element of this initiative is the development of a validation methodology, a common means of comparing the precision, accuracy, and efficiency of segmentation and registration methods. The goal is to make accessible the data, protocol standards, and support soft-ware necessary for a common platform for the whole medical image processing community. This paper outlines the issues and design principles for the test and training data and the supporting software that comprise the proposed Insight Validation Suite, We present the methods for establishing the functional design requirements. We also present a framework for the validation of segmentation and registration software and make some suggestions for validation trials. We conclude with some specific recommendations to improve the infrastructure for validating medical image processing research.