Arthur L. Rosenthal, Ph.D.

When researching anatomical data to develop new biomedical devices, engineers have no universally accepted, reliable resource to rapidly and consistently obtain the information they need. So Benjamin Hertz and Bhavesh Patel, two students in BE 700, Advanced Biomedical Design and Development, have proposed a solution: a software tool called “Interactive Virtual Human” that provides an interactive virtual human body displaying searchable anatomical information obtained from scientific journal articles. For example, a search on “sternum” will highlight the sternum on the virtual body and show average sternum data for males and females, such as dimensions, material properties, and links to related research.

Rather than cherry-picking the information they need about a particular organ such as the heart or foot from countless scientific journal articles, “Interactive Virtual Human” would consolidate the information in one spot. By using this tool during the initial design phase of any medical device, research and development engineers could improve their design as they save time and money.

On the strength of their proposal, Hertz and Patel won the top $5,000 prize in the IEEE-BU Innovation Challenge, the first implementation of IEEE’s Co-Creation program designed to leverage the creativity of engineering and business graduate students to develop new tools that its members could use to design engineering products more efficiently.