Visual Man Lite has a straightforward installation process that requires no special skills or knowledge. The CD contains all the installation instructions. Minimum recommended system requirements include a 386SX or higher CPU, 8MB RAM, Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. The program can run entirely from the CD. Optionally, files can be installed to the hard drive to speed up the program. If the program is run from the CD, the installation program installs a group and icon to the computer desktop. Choosing to install files to the system copies a few files and creates a save directory. Even this takes only about 1MB of disk space. The one thing lacking is an uninstall program.
Visual Man Lite includes 180 transverse sections of a male cadaver in 3mm increments. The regular version includes 1mm increments of over 1800 images with complete sagittal and coronal views of the body with an enhanced interface providing numerous advanced features (according to the documentation with this program). All images are derived from the National Library of Medicine’s Visual Man Project.
The sections are very clear and detailed, especially in full screen display. Buttons at the top of the screen provide for moving forward or backward from the starting slide in either 3mm or 9mm increments to new slides, saving the image to disk, copying an image to the Windows Clipboard, zooming the slide larger or smaller, a help button, a start slide show button and an exit button. There are also menu options for each of these items and other options (such as turning on/off tips). The program runs in two modes, interactive and slide show. In interactive mode the user clicks on a section of the male body on the left of the screen to see a section of the area clicked. According to the tip for doing this, the user can click once for a thumbnail and twice for a slide view. The thumbnail feature did not work on this version of the program.
The program includes a slide show feature which allows the user to select certain sections to view in a pre‐planned presentation. Selecting slides can be done in a number of ways. The easiest is simply to double click on the beginning section and the last section on the male diagram. The user may also add one section to the slide show and then use the plus or minus keys on the numeric keypad to add new sections. It is also possible to add pictures to a slide show by typing in a range of slides. This will only work if you have done the process previously and know the file names of the slides you need. There is no list of which slides correspond to which sections. To complicate this further, the file names of the slides do not correspond to the mm sections on the diagram. Rather than typing file names, the user most likely will use the mouse to add a range of slides to a show by clicking on the male body. The user can also type in a range of sections by mm. The presentation of slides may be put on a timer of one second increments for automatic viewing.
There are two features missing from the slide show function. When running in manual mode, the program could really use a hot key for advancing to the next or previous slide. The only way I could find to do this was by using the menu options Slide show ‐> Next Slide and Slide show ‐> Previous Slide. I would find this tedious when giving a presentation. In timed mode there is no way to pause a presentation. If the presenter gets out of sync with the slides, the only option is to stop the demonstration, click on the proper slide and start again, if you can figure out which slide you need.
Documentation:
The word Lite in the title of this package could also refer to the documentation. There is no printed manual. The only help available is built into the program. There are three forms. If the user lets the cursor rest on certain areas of the screen, windows open with explanations of what can be done. When a feature is started, such as turning on Slide show mode, a window appears with instructions. There is a help feature on the top line menu. Selecting this item brings up a menu consisting of Contents, Search for Help on Help, How to use Help, About/Upgrade, and Register. The Contents section lists headings for Compatibility, Copyrights and Credits, and The Interface Explained. Choosing this last option opens a window which shows a screen dump of the possible items which could appear on the screen, the menu and button bars, the human figure for making selections, the display box, and the Slide show box. There is no text explaining any of these features. In fact there is more information on how to use help than there is actual help text.
Evaluation:
With the exception of thumbnails, this program worked as designed. The images are clear. There are a few features which could work better as explained above. There’s one other thing missing. None of the slides provide any labels for areas of the sections. I can see this program used to supplement classroom presentations, but I’m not sure it would be useful as a learning tool outside of the classroom. There is no testing feature or feedback of any kind as I have seen in other programs. Despite the program’s few shortcomings, I would recommend it.
