Meet the New
Physician’s
Assistants
New York-based BioDigital Systems uses CG
animation to create accurate medical simulations.
by Evelyn Jacobson
often in one of the operating
rooms at New York University’s
medical school, standing alongside a sur-
geon observing intently as a knee re-
placement is started or as a heart sur-
gery is completed. Oliker witnesses pro-
cedures performed by some of the coun-
try’s most talented physicians as part of
his research for creating some of the
most anatomically accurate 3D medical
simulations available.
“To be able to do the animations, you
have to know the surgeries just as well as
the doctor,” says Oliker, technical director
of 3D simulations and partner in BioDigi-
tal Systems, a New York city-based com-
pany that specializes in creating every-
thing from 3D simulated surgical training
phy CT) scans that allowed him to come
up with and accurate surgical model for
the CD-ROM, which is now considered one
of the foremost training tools for the sur-
gery.
Seven years later, Oliker is using his
skills and combining his abilities with
those of partners John Qualter, a medical
animator who heads BioDigital Systems’
animation division, and Frank Sculli, a bio-
medical engineer who leads the compa-
ny’s informatics department (who gath-
ers and plugs the data into the programs),
to create peer-reviewed products that
are on the cutting edge of technology for
a range of clients that include hospitals,
pharmaceutical and medical device com-
panies and medical schools.
medical centers the
company partners with,
like Memorial Sloan-Ket-
tering Cancer Center
and St. Luke’s Hospital's
Image Reading Center.
To create a stem cell
animation that explains
how using stem cells af-
fects the brain for Stem
Cell Therapeutics, a
small Canadian biotech
firm, the team used real
data from Magnetic
Resonance Imaging
(MRI) scans to create
the animated brain.
Aaron Oliker
Frank Sculli
John Qualter
“The more people see these animations, the more
people will see the value of 3D medical visualization
and how it can be used to educate, plan surgeries
or create new procedures.”
—Aaron Oliker, partner and tech director
of 3D simulations at BioDigital Systems
people will see the value of 3D medical visualization
and how it can be used to educate, plan surgeries
or create new procedures.”
—Aaron Oliker, partner and tech director
of 3D simulations at BioDigital Systems
work to databases for cancer institutes.
“You have to see it, and when you create
it, it has to be right because [these ani-
mations are] what people will be using to
train with.”
Oliker began observing procedures while
working on a training DVD that launched
his career in 3D medical visualization. In
1999, he became involved with
SmileTrain a charitable organization that
provides free cleft palate surgeries to
children who would otherwise not receive
care. Working with Dr. Court Cutting, he
developed an animated CD-ROM to show
doctors in Third World countries how to
perform the surgeries. He created Maya
plug-ins to im-
tions, Oliker, Qualter and their respective
teams use the same tools as a Hollywood
animator: After Effects and Combustion
for compositing; Mental Ray for rendering
and Photoshop for texturing. Maya is the,
backbone for the firms’s 3D animations,but
they’ve created plug-ins specifically for
medical animation, as well as proprietary
technology and techniques that are used to
import real-time data and accelerate
processes. The datasets that allow their work to be anatomically
ucts take anywhere
from two weeks to sev-
eral months to create
and can cost $10,000
and up depending on the
length of the project, and
exactly what's involved.
Often, for medical centers
and teaching hospitals, the
company works with
money from grants used to
develop these tools. Qualter
is currently working on a
project with New York
University School of
Medicine called Web
Initiative for Surgical
Education (WISE-MD)
where he is creating
