3D Anatomy Explorer
Turn and zoom a whole human body, peel back the layers, show one system at a time, and point to any structure to see what it is. 3,200 structures, named in English and Latin.
Drag sideways to turn, up or down to move along the body · scroll to zoom where you point · double-click to zoom to a structure
Preparing the 3D body
Loading the model…About 6 MB the first time; quicker after that.How to use it
- Turn, move and zoom. Drag sideways to turn the body all the way round, and drag up or down to move along it: drag down to go up towards the head. Hold Shift while you drag to tilt it. Scroll (or pinch) zooms in where you point; ＋ and － zoom on the middle. Right-drag, or two fingers on a touch screen, moves it in any direction. Double-click a structure to zoom to it. Front, Back, Left, Right and Top jump to a view. With the model selected, the left and right arrow keys turn it, up and down move along it, and Shift with up or down tilts it.
- Body map. The small figure in the corner shows which part of the body is in view (the box). Click or drag on it to go to another part, for example the head or the feet.
- Point to name it. Point to any structure to see its name, or click or tap it to see more: its Latin name, its system, what it is part of and, for the main structures, what it does. For muscles, Show where it attaches marks the origin in red and the insertion in blue.
- Peel the layers. Slide from skin to muscles, organs and bones. Or tick the systems you want, and use Only to show one system by itself, such as the blood vessels or the nerves.
- Isolate, fade or hide. Isolate shows the selected structure alone; Fade others makes everything else see-through; Hide removes it so you can see what lies beneath.
- Find a structure. Type an English or Latin name, such as deltoid, femur, vagus or arteria femoralis. The address in your browser changes as you choose, so you can share a link to a structure.
What is in the model
| System | What is shown |
|---|---|
| Skeletal | Every bone, the teeth, and cartilages. |
| Joints and ligaments | Joint capsules, ligaments, intervertebral discs, menisci and bursae. |
| Muscular | The skeletal muscles, their tendons and fasciae, with the origin and insertion marked on the bones for most of them. |
| Cardiovascular | The heart with its chambers and valves, the arteries and the veins (arteries red, veins blue; the pulmonary arteries are blue and the pulmonary veins red, because of the blood they carry). |
| Nervous | The brain with its gyri, sulci and deep nuclei, the ventricles, the spinal cord and the cranial and spinal nerves. |
| Sense organs | The eye and its parts, the lacrimal apparatus and the inner and middle ear. |
| Respiratory, digestive, urinary, endocrine | The main organs, such as the lungs and bronchi, the oesophagus, stomach, intestines, liver and pancreas, the kidneys and ureters, and the thyroid and adrenal glands. |
| Reproductive | Male: testes, epididymides, ductus deferens, seminal glands, prostate and penis. Female: uterus (body, fundus, cervix and its parts), uterine tubes and ovaries. |
| Lymphatic and immune | Lymph nodes, the thymus, the spleen and the tonsils. |
| Skin and regions | The skin, divided into the named regions of the body. |
The female body: what is and is not modelled yet
The open models of the whole body are made from a male donor. For the female body, this page uses the female pelvis, uterus, uterine tubes, ovaries and urinary bladder from the Human Reference Atlas, made from the Visible Human female, scaled and placed to match the model's pelvis. These are not yet modelled: the vagina, the vulva (external genitalia), the female urethra and the breast. With Female chosen, the skin, muscles and the rest of the skeleton are still the male model, so the shape of the body and the pelvic floor are not female. We say this on the page each time you choose Female.
Names and accuracy
Names follow Terminologia Anatomica (TA2, 2019), the international list of anatomical terms, in British English, with the Latin beneath. The names of the whole-body model come from Z-Anatomy, which follows Terminologia Anatomica; we matched the Human Reference Atlas names to TA2 ourselves. A structure marked not present in everyone is variable (inconstant), and a name marked not in Terminologia Anatomica is shown as the model names it. About 70 structures, mostly brain sulci, small arteries and lymph nodes, have no Latin name in the model and are shown in English only.
The models were made from real bodies, so they show one person's anatomy: sizes, the exact paths of vessels and nerves, and the number of small structures such as lymph nodes vary from person to person. To keep the page fast, every surface was simplified (about 3.7 million triangles from 9.4 million); small structures keep their full detail. The short descriptions of the main structures were written by Only Cells from standard anatomy teaching; if you spot a mistake, please tell us through the contact page.
Credits and licences
- Z-Anatomy by Gauthier Kervyn and contributors, z-anatomy.com, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The bones, joints, muscles and attachments, vessels, nerves, organs and skin come from Z-Anatomy.
- BodyParts3D, © The Database Center for Life Science, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.1 Japan. Z-Anatomy is built on BodyParts3D.
- Human Reference Atlas 3D reference organs (release 1.3), Human BioMolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP), licensed under CC BY 4.0: the female pelvis, uterus, uterine tubes, ovaries and bladder. Made from the Visible Human Project of the US National Library of Medicine.
- The model files on this page were converted and simplified by Only Cells, and they are shared under the same licence, CC BY-SA 4.0: you may reuse them if you credit the sources above and share what you make under the same licence. The 3D viewer uses three.js (MIT licence) and meshoptimizer (MIT).
References and further reading
- Federative International Programme for Anatomical Terminology (FIPAT). Terminologia Anatomica, 2nd edition (TA2). 2019.
- Mitsuhashi N, Fujieda K, Tamura T, Kawamoto S, Takagi T, Okubo K. BodyParts3D: 3D structure database for anatomical concepts. Nucleic Acids Research 2009; 37: D782–D785.
- Börner K, Teichmann SA, Quardokus EM, et al. Anatomical structures, cell types and biomarkers of the Human Reference Atlas. Nature Cell Biology 2021; 23: 1117–1128.
- Kervyn G. Z-Anatomy: an open-source 3D atlas of human anatomy. z-anatomy.com.
- Standring S (editor). Gray's Anatomy: The Anatomical Basis of Clinical Practice, 42nd edition. Elsevier, 2020.