On August 28, MSI participated in the Medical Devices Center booth in the University of Minnesota building at the 2008 Minnesota State Fair. Nancy Rowe, a Scientific Visualization Consultant on the MSI User Support staff, showed fair-goers three-dimensional visualizations of human skeletal and circulation systems and a fly-through of a human heart.
The MDC, a state-of-the-art facility for researchers designing, prototyping, and testing new medical devices, uses MSI resources to achieve its mission. The Center's Director, Professor Arthur Erdman (Department of Mechanical Engineering) is a Principal Investigator at MSI.
The University News Service has an item about the Center's Grand Opening and Open House, including a video. The video includes a clip of a simulation of a "fly-through" of a human heart, which was made using a three-dimensional virtual heart model created at MSI's Scientific Development and Visualization Laboratory. With further processing by User Support staff member Nancy Rowe, the fly-through simulation was created using software in the LCSE-MSI Visualization Laboratory (LMVL).
Researchers at the Medical Devices Center use software available at MSI and the virtual-reality environment at the LMVL. MSI also assists these researchers in turning MRI scans into three-dimensional virtual models.