How to use it
- Move through slices with the mouse wheel, by dragging up or down on the image, with the slider or with the arrow keys. On a phone, swipe up or down on the image.
- Names of the structures in the slice sit beside the image, with a line to each. Point at a name, or at the image, to highlight the structure; click or tap to keep it highlighted. On a phone the names are numbered on the image and listed under it.
- In the lumbar CT, axial and coronal images name one side at a time: choose the patient’s left or right. A structure that is not one of a pair is named on the side where it lies in the slice (the liver when Right is chosen), and on both sides when it lies within 10 mm of the midline. The MRI scans have no paired labels, so they name everything in the slice. Group buttons turn names on or off.
- “Scan” switches between the lumbar MRI, the cervical T2 and T1 MRI and the lumbar CT. For the CT, “Window” changes only how the CT numbers are shown as greys: bone (W 1800, L 400, the default), soft tissue (W 400, L 40) or lung (W 1500, L −600). The MRI greys are fixed.
- Click or tap the image to set the crosshair; the other planes move to that point. Search for a structure to jump to its largest cross-section.
- Quiz: “Find it” asks you to click a structure; “Name it” highlights one and offers four names, the wrong ones mostly its neighbours; “Left or right?” highlights one with the side letters hidden and asks which side of the patient it is on (it asks only about structures that come in pairs, which only the lumbar CT labels). Each question shows a random slice through the structure, in a random plane unless you choose one. Names stay hidden during a question unless you reveal them, which scores no point. Your best score for each scan and setting stays in this browser only.
- With an image selected: ↑ ↓ and Page Up Page Down move through slices; Shift with an arrow key moves the crosshair; Enter highlights the structure at the crosshair (in “Find it”, answers), Esc clears it and L shows or hides the labels. In “Name it”, 1–4 choose an answer.
About the images
The atlas holds four real scans from open datasets that allow reuse: a lumbar spine MRI from the SPIDER dataset, whose musculoskeletal radiologist graded its discs normal; a T2- and a T1-weighted MRI of the neck of one volunteer from the spine-generic dataset, which describes the volunteer as healthy; and a CT of the abdomen and pelvis from the TotalSegmentator dataset, which lists no pathology for it. No scan has been read by a radiologist for this atlas; it is for learning anatomy, not diagnosis. “Scan” switches between them; what follows is about the scan shown.
Axial and coronal images follow the radiological convention: the patient’s right is on the viewer’s left. Sagittal images have anterior on the left. Letters at the image edges show the directions.