Digitised Diseases is an open access resource featuring human bones which have been digitised using 3D laser scanning, CT and radiography. The resource focuses on a wide range of pathological type specimens from archaeological and historical medical collections, specifically examples of chronic diseases which affect the human skeleton for which many of the physical changes are often not directly observable within clinical practice. Of major interest to many will be high fidelity photo-realistic digital representations of 3D bones that can be viewed, downloaded and manipulated on their computer, tablet or smartphone.
The resource is the only large-scale one of its kind in the UK and there are only a few such collections worldwide. Alongside a clinical description of each specimen, the collection also features 400 X-rays of the affected bones of leprosy patients living in Ethiopia during the 1980s. These modern images are a valuable tool for analysing the way the disease has pathologically remodelled itself in the centuries since the Chichester leprosarium was in use.