The Southern Medical University has recent established the data bank of a virtual man, the fourth virtual human born at the university.

Virtual humans are three-dimensional anatomical and dynamic physiological models of the human body to investigate a wide range of biological and physical responses to various stimuli.

Zhong Shizhen, dean of the university's clinical anatomy school, said the virtual man, dubbed "No. 1 Male of Chinese Virtual Humans," was the best example in the world, due to the amount of data and the resolution of the images.

The university, formerly the First Military Medical University, created a virtual woman in February 2003 to make China the third country to have a native virtual human, after the United States and Russia.

The university created another virtual man and a virtual baby girl soon after.

The latest virtual man was created on the basis of the data from a man who died in 2002. The man, from Hunan Province, had volunteered to donate his body for medical research.

The body was cut into pieces 0.2 millimeters thick by fine cutting knives. Every piece was photographed and the data was put into computer to create three-dimensional images

China is at a preliminary stage of virtual human research. Software can be developed to apply virtual human data to teaching, medical care, aviation, scientific research, movie and television and military. Virtual humans can make medical experiments easier because they have the same biological data as humans.

(Shenzhen Daily August 9, 2005)