Digitised Diseases: 3D digital documentation of bone change in cases of chronic disease
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 16/03/2015

Digitised Diseases: 3D digital documentation of bone change in
cases of chronic disease
Andrew S. Wilson, Tom Sparrow, Andrew Holland, Becky Storm, Emma L. Brown, Pawel Eliasz, David Keenan, Carina Phillips, Natasha Powers, Jo Buckberry, Chris Gaffney, Hassan Ugail, Keith Manchester University of Bradford

This talk reviews ‘Digitised Diseases’, an important legacy project based at the University of Bradford which received funds from Jisc’s mass digitisation programme and was partnered with the Royal College of Surgeons of England and MOLA. The project used 3D digital documentation to record examples of chronic diseases manifest in the human skeleton. From the outset we had to design a hierarchical classification structure that was comprehensible to both clinicians and palaeopathologists, recognising that this would serve as an important framework for presenting our 3D content. We created photo-realistic 3D digital models of type specimens of diseased bone from archaeological and historical medical collections in Bradford, London and York. These models are now available as an open access resource that enables users to view and manipulate models online and also download higher resolution textured models for use with freely available viewers on a range of platforms. From the outset we used regular project bulletins via a range of social media to target potential users from the bioarchaeological community, with considerable global interest. We continue to update this resource which went live in December 2013. Usage now exceeds initial expectations with users in medicine, anatomy and the medical humanities as well as amongst the general public coming from over 125 different countries.