Before I share with you some thoughts on visualization, let me acknowledge the passing of Dr. AJ Ladman, esteemed editor-in-chief of The Anatomical Record from 1968 to 1998 and a lifelong member of our organization. His commitment to the journal, dedication to the mentorship of diverse scholars, advocacy for anatomical sciences, and genuine service to the community were outstanding. And it is this legacy that we honor every year with the award named after him. Our deepest sympathy goes to all his family and friends, which I know includes many of you. You can read more about Dr. Ladman here.
As AAA staff is actively working behind the scenes on preparing our annual meeting in Toronto in March 2024, I hope you too are working on your research and your abstract for the meeting. Your results may be shown as a graph or a table; you may also feature microscopic images with bright colors and interesting structures. Whether your work will be displayed on a poster board or delivered orally, you will engage in some form of scientific communication.
Many of us have focused our scientific communication efforts on written delivery. In fact, the writing of your abstract is one such exercise. And if you attended the recent SciComm Bootcamp supported by AAA, you also learned you need to make your work accessible to the large scientific community. If you are like me, you may be a visual learner. And even if you are not, a picture is still worth a thousand words. Images are powerful means to support stories and communicate concepts. Did you not love your picture books at story time while growing up?
As investigators of the anatomical sciences, we often are visual people. We learn the anatomy of the human body by observing relationships between structures, we carefully characterize structures because structure relates to function. Recently, many of our scientific journals have adopted graphical abstracts, a single, concise, pictorial, and visual summary of the main findings of the article. They help the reader to quickly gain an overview of a scholarly paper. And despite our visual strength, we are often ill-prepared to engage in such visual forms of communication.
Scientific and medical illustrators are trained to take your scientific story and create a visual representation of it. Their work spans scientific magazine cover pages to pamphlets explaining medical procedures. As we develop our annual meeting under the theme “Visualization in Anatomy”, we invited the Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI) to be our guest society. Collaborations work best when partners are complementary to each other, and AAA is thrilled to continue its partnership with AMI. It will strengthen the fabric of the scientific community while enhancing the visual accessibility of research.
Todd Buck, President of AMI said, “I am looking forward to working with AAA and participating in their annual meeting in Toronto. This organic working relationship leverages the talent of both groups and will foster new and unexplored professional partnerships. Our associations share goals in facilitating scientific understanding, communication, education, and research.”
Visualization of science will ultimately reach and speak to a broader audience, and increase trust of the global community towards science. Wasn’t this one of the goals of early anatomists and artists like Vesalius and Leonardo Da Vinci? Art and anatomy together tell a much richer scientific story.
Martine Dunnwald, PharmD, Ph.D., FAAA
AAA President
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA