An Interactive Color Skull Atlas of the Human Skull

Using state of the art digital images and software, an interactive color atlas of the human skull is being developed to assist the student in learning the various bony features of the skull and provide an easy to use method for self-testing.  In order to benefit a wide variety of health professionals, we have also added an interactive index so that the atlas will serve as an efficient resource for identifying specific areas of interest.
Providing a tool that both instructs and assists in the educational process has always been an academic challenge.  Historically, knowledge of skull anatomy has strongly been emphasized by many of the health professions, but often given little instruction time.  Typically, skull reference material ranges from drawings to photographs with no easy method for identification of landmarks or for self-testing.  Therefore, our Anatomy laboratory has been involved with the generation of high resolution digital skull photographs that have been folded in with commercially available software for the purpose of assisting the student in learning the Anatomy of the human skull. Some of the early features of this program, piloted by dental students, led to the addition of several enhancements, including a toggle for switching between the self-testing feature and a fully labelled view.  The atlas is also being constructed to assist those health professionals who wish to quickly access specific areas of interest by the incorporation of an interactive index.  The initial electronic features of this atlas have incorporated only a few views of the skull; however, additional views of the articulated skull, as well as views of disarticulated bones, will be added as a part of this first developmental phase.
It is expected that once completed this atlas will have the electronic versatility of being placed on a web server for use by anyone as an online resource as well as presented on CD/DVD formats for use by students or other health professionals as their own personal resource. Supported by the Texas A&M Univ. Sys. HSC, Baylor College of Dentistry, Department of Biomedical Sciences.