As a component of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the National Museum of Health and Medicine has a broad mission to educate the public and professionals about health and medicine.  As a department of the museum, HDAC continues this mission through collaborations with universities, medical professionals, researchers and other educational projects.

Human Embryo Sections on DVD's for Education
The Human Developmental Anatomy Center is currently in collaboration with the Louisiana State University Medical Center (LSUMC) on an educational project, "Human Embryo Sections on DVD's for Education". The objective of this project is to provide students, educators and researchers accurate, inexpensive, and accessible visual information on human embryonic development. Aligned digital images of the serial sections of the best, normal human embryos in the Carnegie Collection will be made available on computer disks (DVD's). The DVD's will enable students to learn human embryology from actual embryos; enable educators to produce many varied instructional media on human embryonic development; and provide a valuable reference for developmental biologists.

LSUMC contact: Dr. Ray Gasser rgasse@lsumc.edu

University of Illinois, Chicago Medical School and The Department of Biomedical Visualization project for patient education.
An ongoing "Embryology 2000" project exists at UIC.  The goal of this project is to facilitate the overall understanding of the process of human development through the use of a variety of instructional tools and use of MRM data sets from five separate embryos from the Carnegie Collection (imaged at the Biological Magnetic Resonance Laboratory at the University of Illinois- Urbana-Champaign). The project plans to develop a multi-media application which will allow users to view embryos and their organ systems at any developmental stage in a virtual environment.  The information will be available on the Internet and on CD-ROMs and users will be able to adjust the application depending on their level of comprehension.