To travel through the body and reveal its mysteries presents a cornucopia of opportunities for animators. A great deal has changed since sci-fi films such as Fantastic Voyage and Innerspace gave us their cinematic perception of what it would be like to journey around the human body. Beyond light entertainment, serious medical animation is a burgeoning industry and medical artists are increasingly using 3D animation as a medium. Both here and in America companies such as Nucleus Medical Art, Random42 and Eyemagination are making the most of 3D technology producing short films visualising a bodily function or the internal effect of a particular drug on the body.

The clientele for medical animators is broad ranging from doctors and consultants, bio-technology companies, universities and pharmaceutical companies to advertisers and even lawyers who use animations in the courtroom as a visual tool. Companies such as ophthalmic specialists Eyemagination use bespoke 3D animations to enable patients to see their defect in 3D glory and understand the surgical process required to fix it. The company trusts animation to communicate information to their patients so effectively they even rely on it as a tool to help avoid any nasty litigious situations that may arise regarding patient consent.

Mechanism of Action

Fellow American medical animators Nucleus Medical Art have a more eclectic client list. CEO and company founder Ronald Collins explains, "We service a wide variety of clients primarily in the medical device, pharmaceutical and online publishing markets. Medical device and pharmaceutical companies use medical animations on broadcast commercials, web sites and at trade shows to explain a product's 'mechanism of action', which is another way of saying 'how it works'. Because all of our medical animators have graduate (master's) degrees with training in anatomy and physiology, they can easily communicate with the subject experts to create a realistic final product. Ultimately, these animations are used to train healthcare workers, sales staff and the consumer."

British-based company Random42 also produce 3D animations for the pharmaceutical industry. Director and founder of Random42, Hugo Paice explains the creative process:

"To create a mechanism of action animation we start with an initial meeting with the marketing director or product manager and a relevant scientist. In this meeting we sketch out a basic storyboard and a list of key points that we need to make in the video. Two weeks later we email a first draft script and comprehensive storyboard. After approval of the storyboard we require four weeks to complete the animation. Output can be on DVD PAL/NTSC HD or stereoscopic. The animation is typically four to eight minutes in length and can be dubbed into any language."

A Fantastic Voyage

The union of science and art through animation is deeply evocative and the inherent beauty of the human body lends itself to the freedom of the media. Resplendent in colour and movement, medical animation tends to be bursting with drama whether the film is depicting a virus entering the body or the onslaught of a new cancer drug attacking a tumour. The use of video is not a new concept in the medical profession but the introduction of 3D has brought fresh potential.

Ron Collins (who uses Maxon Cinema 4D on a Macintosh workstation) says: "A well-made medical animation can make a concept more visually and intellectually engaging than simply text or still images, especially if the medical animation can tell a story that the viewer can encode. I would say that the elements of accuracy, storytelling and good editing make a great medical animation..."

Hugo Paice agrees, "In the past [medical videos] would largely consist of video footage of the head and shoulders of medical professionals talking at length about how a new drug works. But it is difficult to explain how a drug works in the human body, and audiences prefer to be shown... 3D animation can fly virtual cameras throughout the human body. As viewers, we can travel with red blood cells along arteries to explore cardiovascular concerns... When a new drug enters the scene, we can see for ourselves how it interacts with the complex mechanisms of the human body."

Moving Into The Mainstream

The appeal of medical animation is not confined to the pharmaceutical boardroom. Nucleus Medical Art's graceful animation of childbirth has received over 790,000 hits (with 5,000 new hits each day) after it was posted on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xath6kOf0NE). The company describe the huge response as "gratifying". Meanwhile, National Geographic's recent series The Living Body combines real-life footage and animation. On the NGC website, producer Stephen Marsh explains the techniques used.

"You are watching a mixture of models, CGI and real footage all joined seamlessly together. We wanted to keep people in the moment and on the journey - if there were jagged jumps between footage then they would be take out of the experience... We had to use CGI and models to visualise elements that would be impossible to capture in real life - but by blending the images together into a seamless whole we create the illusion of a journey through a living body."

The Future's Bright

The market for medical animation is huge and the response within the medical profession has been overwhelmingly positive. What more can we expect from medical animators? Ron Collins of Nucleus Medical Art:

"This profession follows the lead of scientific discovery and we are entering a new frontier in molecular biology and genetics that will eclipse our current knowledge of the human body over the next 20 years... For portraying gross anatomy and physiology, medical animators can look forward to improving medical imaging technology such as MRI scans that will give them access to limitless 3D data sets to create more accurate and detailed medical animations reflecting a wider range of differences related to gender, age, anatomical anomalies, etc. Right now, most animators are using the same 3D models to create anatomy, physiology and surgery animations. At some point, real patient data can be used (with permission) to generate models. An animator could even use scans of friends, family and himself to create 3D data."