Anatom-e Information Systems, Ltd. was founded in 2004 by Dr. Linda Anne Hayman, M.D. with the express goal of improving patient care and information-based medical practice. It was recognized that medicine is still in somewhat of a dark ages, where the shining knights known as Doctors wield powerful devices and use them to the best of their knowledge; Anatom-e was created to be the pen to the Doctors’ sword. With the mission of educating and informing doctors of pertinent information they need to know, confirming what they already know, and providing a baseline of consistent information support, Anatom-e can provide for a level of patient care heretofore unavailable anywhere in the world. Along with the help of a team of computer programmers with a background in computer video gaming and medical researchers with a background in anatomy, Dr. Hayman has successfully created a system whereby Radiation Oncologists, Radiologists, and Surgeons can find out anatomically based information relative to their patients.
The Anatom-e Viewer with accompanying Deformable Anatomic Template has grown to become the world’s largest anatomical template of the human body, encompassing every part of the body except for the limbs. Within this large collection of anatomical information, Anatom-e has embedded treatment recommendations, neurological signs, radiation dose limitations, and other information pertinent to anatomical location which cannot be readily found in any one resource.
By keeping a strong additional focus in the medical research necessary to fill the template with every piece of information possible, Anatom-e has managed to link anatomical location with previously inaccessible information. For example, given a stroke victim, the Anatom-e software can be used to pinpoint a probable stroke location based on a list of symptoms in a patient. In knowing treatment recommendations for tumor stages based on multiple consensuses, Anatom-e can highlight secondary pathways of tumor spread, the margins of a clinical target volume, or elective areas for radiation treatment. The Anatom-e medical research staff deigns to pour through any and all available medical publications and example patient information with the intent to incorporate it into the Anatom-e information system.
By pouring part of the company’s efforts into the software development necessary to access this large body of information, Anatom-e has developed novel and exciting methods to visualize and understand patient and anatomical information. The Anatom-e Viewer can import patient data and use Anatom-e’s Deformable Anatomic Template (DAT) by changing its shape and warping to fit the patient’s anatomy. The Anatom-e Viewer can then render patient scans volumetrically to visualize parts of the patient anatomy. One of the novel uses for this is embedding the DAT inside the volume rendering so we can have three dimensionally labeled views of patient information. The Anatom-e Viewer can also load patient Radiation Therapy Dose and Structure Sets combined with the DAT to show how the contouring is similar to or differs from the normal structures or structures of interest. Furthermore, the Anatom-e Viewer possesses the capability to connect to other software systems (such as neuronavigational equipment) with for the purpose of
adding real-time patient-based anatomical information to otherwise information-starved or intuition-based practices.The Anatom-e technology team strives to stay on the cutting edge of medical visualization and interface technology to improve patient care and access to previously inaccessible information.
