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Digital atlas allows navigating human organs in 3D, zooming in on internal structures, and observing microscopic details without cutting tissues, on an open platform created for scientific research, medical education, and studies on complex diseases.
An open digital atlas allows observing entire human organs in three dimensions, navigating internal structures, and zooming in on the image to details close to the cellular level without cutting the tissue.
The platform, called Human Organ Atlas, was developed by an international consortium led by scientists from University College London, with synchrotron X-ray imaging technology at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France.
The comparison to a “Google Earth” of the human body appears in the project’s announcement because the tool allows starting from a broad view of a complete organ and advancing to specific regions at different scales.
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In practice, the system bridges radiology, used to visualize entire organs, with histology, which traditionally relies on thin tissue sections analyzed under a microscope.
The atlas was described in an article published in the journal Science Advances in 2026.
According to the authors, the database brings together multiscale three-dimensional images of human organs and was created to support biomedical research, anatomy education, computational tool development, and studies on diseases affecting different body systems.
How the 3D human body atlas works
The technology used in the platform is Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Tomography, known by the acronym HiP-CT.
Unlike a tomography performed in a hospital setting, the method uses X-ray beams produced by a synchrotron, equipment that accelerates particles to generate high-intensity radiation applied to the analysis of materials and tissues.
According to University College London, the source used at the ESRF can be up to 100 billion times brighter than that of conventional hospital tomographs.
With this, researchers can non-destructively scan donated organs and produce images with a resolution of 8 to 20 micrometers in entire organs, in addition to enlarging regions of interest up to about 1 micrometer.
The procedure keeps the sample preserved.
Instead of slicing the biological material at the beginning of the analysis, the team maps the complete architecture of the organ and identifies areas that can be examined in greater detail.
This process allows tracking vessels, cavities, tissues, and structural changes in the same three-dimensional reconstruction.
For biomedical researchers, this type of imaging helps study diseases that are not limited to an isolated point.
Vascular, inflammatory, or tumoral changes can appear in different regions of an organ or involve more than one system, making it relevant to observe the spatial arrangement of these structures.
What can already be seen in the Human Organ Atlas
The current version released by UCL gathers data from 62 organs, with 319 complete three-dimensional datasets, obtained from 29 donors.
The collection covers 12 types of organs and tissues, including brain, heart, lung, kidney, liver, colon, eye, spleen, placenta, uterus, prostate, and testicle.
These numbers supersede previous surveys, published during the platform’s development phase, when the database contained fewer samples.
As the Human Organ Atlas continues to be updated, the quantity of organs, donors, and datasets may vary as new materials are prepared and made available to the public.
The data volume demonstrates the project’s technical complexity.
Each dataset can occupy hundreds of gigabytes or exceed one terabyte, and the largest file cited by UCL, referring to a brain, reaches 14 terabytes.
To enable internet navigation, the team developed an infrastructure capable of displaying interactive images through the browser, without requiring specialized user programs.
The platform offers online visualization, data in multiple resolutions, tutorials, and analysis tools.
The content is aimed at researchers, doctors, educators, students, and people interested in understanding the internal organization of real human organs.
Why 3D imaging can help in the study of diseases
The development of the atlas gained momentum during research related to covid-19.
According to UCL, the HiP-CT technique has already been used in studies that identified microscopic lesions in the blood vessels of the lungs of people who died from the disease.
The same approach also appears in research on cardiac changes and gynecological disorders.
In diseases such as cancer, hypertension, diabetes, pulmonary fibrosis, and cardiovascular diseases, scientists investigate not only the presence of lesions but also how they are distributed in tissues.
3D analysis of whole organs can contribute to this type of study because it maintains the spatial relationship between structures that, in conventional microscopic sections, may appear separate.
In the case of cancer, clinical examinations usually detect larger lesions, while histology examines specific tissue fragments.
HiP-CT occupies an intermediate analysis range: it allows tracking extensive areas at high resolution and then zooming in on selected regions for more detailed observation.
This possibility was described by researchers as one of the technique’s applications in biomedical investigation.
Claire Walsh, a researcher at University College London and director of the Human Organ Atlas Hub, stated in institutional material that the platform was designed to make data accessible and support new ways of studying human physiology.
The team also believes that the database can be used by groups developing artificial intelligence models applied to medicine, provided that the results are tested and validated in research.
Open science and new references for human anatomy
The project brings together nine institutions from Europe and the United States, with the participation of researchers, engineers, doctors, and digital infrastructure specialists.
Peter Lee, Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at UCL and principal investigator for the synchrotron beamtime linked to the atlas, stated that the collaboration has supported studies on diseases such as osteoarthritis and heart problems.
The open access proposal plays a central role in the project.
Paul Tafforeau, an ESRF scientist and one of the pioneers of the technique used to create the atlas, stated that the initial intention was to make the data accessible to different audiences and build a shared scientific infrastructure on a global scale.
In medical education, the tool offers a way to visualize real organs in three dimensions.
Instead of observing only illustrations, physical models, or isolated sections, students can navigate digital reconstructions and track the position of vessels, cavities, and tissues at different depths.
The collection can also serve as a reference for artificial intelligence systems aimed at analyzing medical images.
Open, standardized, and high-resolution three-dimensional databases are still limited, according to the project’s dissemination, which makes the Human Organ Atlas a data source for tasks such as segmentation, pattern detection, and image reconstruction.
Limits of the digital human organ atlas
The atlas does not represent the full anatomical diversity of the population.
As the organs come from donors, there are variations in age, biological sex, clinical history, and sample availability.
Those responsible for the project state that the collection is expected to grow with new organs, more samples, and additional tools over the coming years.
It is also not an examination for individual diagnosis.
The images are obtained from donated organs and analyzed outside the body, under laboratory conditions.
The main application, according to the authors, is in research, teaching, and the creation of anatomical references that can be consulted by different scientific groups.
Another limitation is the scale.
At the current stage, the work focuses on isolated organs, although researchers have reported the intention to develop the technique to produce images of complete human bodies with a resolution 10 to 20 times higher than currently obtained.
By bringing together complete organs, zoomable images, and open access data, the Human Organ Atlas creates a form of observation that is not yet part of routine medical practice but is already integrated into research in anatomy, vascular diseases, cancer, fibrosis, covid-19, and artificial intelligence.
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