Model development also involved engineers at Glassworks, a computer graphics firm in the U.K. HeartWorks software is used in an ultrasound simulator with an interactive image and lifelike controls of a probe. For a demo of the simulator and to see the heart beat, visit www.heartworks.me.uk

An animated 3D CAD model of the human heart put together by a team of U.K. doctors is so realistic its four chambers beat in the same asymmetrical rhythm as a real heart. The model, HeartWorks, should improve doctor training. (It is used in diagnostic simulators.) Development took four years by doctors who specialized in different parts of the heart. “We can slice the model, spin it around, and look at it from any angle,” says Sue Wright, an anesthesiologist at the Heart Hospital in London and collaborator in the development. The model is said to set a new standard for understanding cardiac structure.

Other developers at the Heart Hospital say they designed the digital heart because current 2D models were inaccurate. They also had limitations that make it hard to teach students to perform complicated ultrasound heart scans that entail guiding a probe through the throat to the stomach.