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When Medical Animation Led To A Scientific Breakthrough

Written by Girish Khera on

Scientists set out to create a medical animation showing how sperm moves, and they ended up making a significant discovery.

Don Ingber, founding director of Harvard Wyss Institute and Charles Reilly, a molecular biophysicist and professional animator, carried out a research study presenting a new explanation for how and why a sperm moves the way it does at the atomic level. But more than the discovery, the fascinating bit is how they arrived at their conclusion.

Their discovery stemmed from their quest to create an accurate (from micro, molecular and atomic angle) medical animation for the purpose of education.

3D Medical Animation showing pregnancy
 

They decided to create a visualization of how the sperm swims and fuses with the egg, for which they developed a physical model following the scientific data at all those scales. Animating it properly meant maintaining an accurate biological model all the way down to the atomic level.

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How Medical Animation was instrumental in advancing a Scientific Research?

Physics and biology go hand in hand. Digital animation and effects software are the soul of a Pixar movie. Since fluidity is an important requisite for modeling biological systems to make them look as ‘real’ as possible, the goal of a medical animation is ‘visual realism’.

Imagine assembling a puzzle with only a piece of the reference picture: it might take more trial and error than usual, but after a point there’s only one way the puzzle can fit together based on the data that you have. Ingber and Reilly got through this project in a similar manner. Using the medical animation software, they got the flexibility to build the model at different scales at the same time, modify it until the pieces fit together, and then check back with the data to make sure it fit. The observed behavior of molecules was matched with the existing data on the motion of the proteins that caused a certain movement in the sperm tail. The ability to move between scales enabled the researchers to get new insight into how the the dynein motor proteins (attached to the microtubules) change form and drive motion inside the sperm tail.

Take a look at the final product:

The Beginning from Wyss Institute on Vimeo.
 

Their effort of creating a realistic visual made them solve the sperm motility riddle by borrowing assets and tools from different disciplines. Reilly sees boundless opportunities for overlap between the scientific and entertainment fields in terms of studying drug development and disease modeling.


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