Modernizing Animal Anatomy Resources to Preserve and Deepen Knowledge. Mieke Roth and Paul Schilperoord, Anitomical B.V.

Happy Planet Wednesday!

Did you know that the muscle, the snail and the octopus share a common feature? The esophagus runs through the brain. 

Today we are traveling to the Netherlands, where we meet Mieke Roth and Paul Schilperoord of Anitomical, B.V., a company addressing an educational market with new tools to facilitate the study of animal anatomy, thanks to their intricate 3D digital renderings. Mika and Paul are starting with marine life, including mussels, sea squirts, and more, but they hope to grow their library to encompass much of the animal kingdom.

Transcript

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Abigail 0:13

Welcome to the podcast where we celebrate innovation for a happy planet. I am your host, Abigail Carroll. Did you know that the muscle, the snail and the octopus share a common feature? The esophagus runs through the brain. Today we are traveling to the Netherlands, where we meet Mika Roth, and Paul shipper roots of anatomical, a company addressing an educational market with new tools to facilitate the study of animal anatomy. Thanks to their intricate 3D digital. Mika and Paul are starting with marine life, including muscles, sea squirts, and others, but they hope to grow their library to encompass much of the animal kingdom. How far can they take this? Let's hear it from them. Welcome to the podcast.

Paul 1:02

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Abigail 1:05

I'm delighted to have you both here. You have a company called Anatomical and you're in the Netherlands. What does anatomical do?

Mieke 1:14

We are, opening up, animal anatomy via, 3D models that are reviewed by experts.

Abigail 1:26

Can you elaborate a little bit? What is a 3D model of an animal and what kind of animal.

Mieke 1:31

At this moment, mainly the animals that are available for comparative anatomy education. So from Amobi until frogs and birds and so on. And it's we are building digital models in a way that are easily viewable and accessible for a lot of people. Imagine the models you had in classrooms that are. Cut open and you can see the internal organs and so on. But we are doing it digitally. So those models but then up to date,

Abigail 2:18

i've seen them. They're colorful and you can see veins, you can see, blood circulation. You can see the different organs and it looks like you can go through different layers. Why is it important that this be digitized, and how is that helping?

Mieke 2:34

At this moment a lot of anatomical education is done via dissections. Dissection classes and via books with photos and illustrations and there is a loss of education, of anatomical knowledge within educators and a loss of yeah, educators in, in general. Regarding this. So what we are doing is getting it out of the books and show a yeah, an actual anatomy model so you can see the internal organs as they are in the life animal.

Abigail 3:31

How did you get to understand the biology of these animals?

Mieke 3:35

I have a background that, that matters regarding this, and I've been doing this for 20 plus years now. So what I do, if I start working on a model, I first try to get as much information as possible regarding the animal itself, but I also dissect them myself, and I use a lot of scientific literature to get to a model that is. Accurate enough to go to reviewers and they then give a lot of comments and I adjust them accordingly.

Abigail 4:19

So can you dig in a little bit more and really describe the process soup to nuts of how these digital renderings are made.

Mieke 4:28

Basically I work as a. Scientific researcher. But my, my my output is visual and what I do is I work in a 3D application named ZBrush. That's basically a digital clay yeah. Program so you can sculpt in it and you can model in it as if you are working with. Physical clay. What I do most of the time I start working on the overall anatomy. So I choose one of the features that can. Incorporate everything else. Like for example, for a mammal, it's more logical to use the skeleton as a base. But for a mollusks it's more use more logical to use the skin as a base. So it's, you need to have something that can en embody the rest of the organs. And then I go organ by organ. I investigate, I search for papers that are connected to it, that are in depth on that specific organ or organ system, and I try to model it as good as I can regarding that. When I have a basic understanding of the anatomy of that specific organ system, and I have incorporated within the whole animal and incorporated it within all the other organ systems, I hope I'm able to get an animal a specimen. And I'm going to and I'm dissecting that specimen to check if I'm correct. And most of the time that's results in more modeling, more detailing, more researching for specific features that are in scientific research papers, and so on. And. When that is done I am optimizing the model in such a way, then I can upload it towards a review application we have. And I pick, I pull the model apart in organ systems and I makes separate files for the organ systems. And I annotate them and I then send them to reviewers. So I say, is this specific feature what I'm doubting about, correct or not? And if so if it isn't correct. What did I do wrong? And so on. And I go back and forth with such a reviewer. And then finally a model is yeah good enough to get into the application. So that's basically it.

Abigail 7:54

You find the research, you're compiling research, you're having peer review. How long does that take? Like for a snail or, a mo.

Mieke 8:03

It, it depends on the complexity of the animal. But for example, I did a, an, I have to look it up what the normal name is in English. Si that's a just a moment. It's. In English, it's called a C squirt. And that's a very unknown animal. But it isn't that complex. But it has features that aren't generally known. So that took a few week, a few days to dig into, but in total it cost me two, three weeks to finish that one.

Abigail 8:50

Oh

Mieke 8:51

I also have models that takes month, that take months to finish. Yeah. Yeah.

Abigail 8:56

You were trying to bring this to schools. Is this a graduate school thing or are these undergrad or high schoolers? What's your market here?

Mieke 9:04

We first targeted BSC students but it can basically can be targeted for anything. So from now kindergarten is a bit too soon I think, but high school, university, college, and so on. Yeah.

Abigail 9:23

How is this 3D model changing the way we think about this type of education? Is it more interactive? Is it more fun

Mieke 9:32

it's more accessible because a lot of the education regarding anatomy of animals to be precise is based on illustrations and so on. And, it's harder to imagine the anatomy of the animal itself in its environment and so on. Yeah I'm thinking out loud right now, but it's first of all, there are less teacher less educators that can educate people regarding anatomy. Animal anatomy. And second, it's we are more used to be in a digital environment we don't want to dissect animals anymore. We don't want to use animals for education or something because yeah we don't want to hurt animals also..

Abigail 10:34

So it's interesting. We got two, two problems. One, there aren't any edu. The sheer number of educators is evaporating and. Potentially if everybody were just dissecting all these animals, we'd be losing animals too. So if we hurry now while there's still that, that educational knowledge about anatomy and we can create a legacy product. Basically these legacy drawings that can save continue this education and save animals moving forward.

Mieke 11:09

that's it. Basically.

Abigail 11:13

How did you get inspired to do this?

Mieke 11:19

It's basically the thing I've been doing all my life. I've always been interested in how things work. And anatomy is one of the most interesting yeah, subjects regarding this because there are so many different solutions for the same problem. Every needs to eat. Every animal needs to reproduce, every animal needs to live. React to its environment and so on. And there are a gazillion solutions for this. And other fact is that those solutions shape the animal. So you have a function that shapes. The form and form that shapes the function and that's, yeah, I think amazing.

Paul 12:22

Yeah, and studying those solutions or comparative anatomy becomes very easy where you have 3D models of those animals at your

Mieke 12:29

Yeah.

Paul 12:31

So in the application that we build, you can load in two different, two different animals. So any animals of which we have a model. I completely studied the anatomy and very easily compare the anatomy between those two different species.

Mieke 12:46

You can also see why some animals are related and why some animals are further apart. And you can expect certain features within an animal that is a species that is related to another species. You have as a 3D model. So you have more insight in why things happen and how things happen.

Paul 13:50

Yeah, so it's for scientific research as Mika just explained, but it's also, for example, biomimicry. There are all kinds of technical solutions that come from nature. And also in medicine research, for example animals are studied a lot.

Abigail 14:05

We just actually had a whole podcast on biomimicry which was really fantastic consulting firm here in Paris, that, that is building. Solutions for like very specific problems for big industrial companies, either in Aeronomics or all sorts of different industries. With starting with the study of, finding a solution in nature, which is such an interesting concept to me.

Paul 14:35

Yeah.

Abigail 14:38

So getting back to the business, you've developed a whole slew of these models. How many animals have you detailed so far?

Mieke 14:49

So 16 models by the end of March are implemented in the application and there are a lot more behind the scenes that are in development.

Abigail 15:02

The. Yeah. Yeah. I, it sounds very complex to make them so you're trying to pitch this as an educational tool. This is a

Mieke 15:12

Yeah.

Abigail 15:13

and and how is that going? How has the response been to this? Are people understanding the value of having this digital tool that sort of conforms to our new lifestyles? I could see students looking at that on their phones. They're interesting. You can move them around.

Paul 15:34

Yeah, exactly. So we started so our first target market is universities. So we started that level of education and we already did a couple of trial runs on pilot projects here in Holland at the Bay University

Abigail 15:46

Yep.

Paul 15:47

and also at the University of Plymouth in the uk. And the response has been very positive. So both from students as well as from the educators, that this really makes it easier to understand animal anatomy. And of course it's different depending on the animal, but for example, we did some trial runs with dissection of a squid. if you cut open the dead squid, everything just falls flat in front of you. Everything is more or less the same color, the same texture. So it's very difficult if you've never done that before, it's very difficult to find out what you're actually looking at. So the students used our 3D model in the application to, to find the organ systems that they were looking for. And the feedback that we got is that it helped them a lot to find that. And it was easier for the educators as well because they're less and less well-trained educators, which have. Really in depth knowledge to do dissection classes with a whole variety of animals. So they struggle too sometimes to do these classes, so it's easier for them as well. And in Amsterdam, here in Holland at university are looking to replace a number of dissection classes with the use of 3D models. So that's very interesting. But we are talking with more universities in Europe at the moment that are interested to implement our application with the first number of models.

Abigail 17:09

Yeah. Very interesting. So what does it take to get this up and running? Have you had to raise money? Is this something, is this a project that you're able to do on the side? What do you need now to make this work?

Paul 17:24

Yeah, so we are a startup company and we started more or less on the side for Mika. This was a it's her profession, so she's been doing this.

Abigail 17:32

a passion project.

Paul 17:33

been doing this, but also professionally more as a, from a freelance role for the last 12, 13 years. I joined much later, and for me, I started doing this on the side of my regular job, but in 2024, we got some financing from a regional, investment company in the Netherlands. And that enabled us to work in the past year or a bit more than a year to develop the markets to develop our application, develop more models, do market research, reach out to universities and potential clients, potential partners. So we did a lot of different things. We have some first clients lined up now, so universities. But now, yeah, we need to raise more finances to, to develop this further and also to develop other markets as well because education, purely education is the first market, but we can move to other forms of education as well, so that you can think of education of professionals, for example, like veterinarians who work with animals. Cause that there's a whole field there as well. In human medicine the use of human corpses for dissection has been replaced, not fully, but to a large extent by 3D digital models. And we could do the same in education for veterinary schools, but also for veterinary practitioners who want to get some more in depth knowledge of the animals they have to treat. And the knowledge, there's a lot of knowledge available, but it's now it's hidden in textbook, in papers, in photographs, in scans, and all kinds of data we can protect, present that much more easily through 3D models. So that's another market we want to explore.

Abigail 19:14

Although you do hope that the veterinarian has done some dissect dissections because you wanna make sure he. He cuts or she cuts the right, like the right thing out.

Paul 19:25

Yeah, exactly. But the thing is that of course they have this inner education, but not necessarily for each type of animal. Maybe you get a bit of a more exotic pet in your practice. Then you have to have that knowledge at already. And the same applies for zoos and aquariums, by the way. So we've been in contact with a couple of zoos and aquariums as well. They struggle with this as well. If they have to operate some exotic animals, they have to search for the anatomical data and also find someone

Abigail 19:54

from the 18th century, like a B, I could just see those old drawings.

Paul 19:59

they also have to look for someone with the skillsets. To operate on that animal. So there are cases where, for example, a tiger needs to be operated on and the veterinarian who does that maybe nor normally operates on cats and it just extrapolates from, yeah, it's a bit of, it's a bit bigger. It's cat-like,

Abigail 20:17

Yeah.

Paul 20:18

up the data that is available and they do their best. So there are all kinds of specific areas where we can support veterinarians.

Abigail 20:26

yeah. So let's take an animal that's protected, maybe, I don't know, maybe a zebra, I don't know, or an elephant. How do you go about. Putting the model together for something like that, assuming you're not gonna go dissect an elephant, how do you create the model?

Mieke 20:46

There is an enormous amount of scientific papers regarding most of the animals that are needed. To be developed in 3D and we have a vast network of specialists also on almost any animal you can imagine.

Abigail 21:09

Wow.

Paul 21:12

Question of searching for the information, so it comes from papers. Can come. Sometimes it comes from quite all sources like books. 'cause there was a lot of studies have been done, of course, over the past couple of centuries. So sometimes the best information can be in, in a book from a hundred years ago.

Abigail 21:31

Yeah.

Paul 21:31

it is also, there are scans, of course, scans, CT scans, micro CT scans available of all kinds of animals. But to read those scans is more is, it's difficult, it's a specialized job, so it's. But Mika knows how to do that and to incorporate that information into the model.

Mieke 21:47

Yeah.

Abigail 21:48

Wow.

Paul 21:49

then the end product of 3D model is much easier to read and to understand.

Mieke 21:53

Yeah. Basically you need to be you. A standard modeler, a standard 3D modeler can't do this because he doesn't, he or she doesn't have an anatomy knowledge and you have to have the scientific knowledge to be able to do this also.

Abigail 22:14

so it seems like you are in a very unique position to do this, but it also sounds like a lot of responsibility. 'Cause it's really important that these be super accurate and we get it right. And you're, it sounds like you're proposing a vast number of different animals In your sort of encyclopedia, how many, like how far do you wanna take it?

Mieke 22:39

As far as I am able to, as far as our clients want to have basically,

Abigail 22:47

So you add an animal on a demand basis? Is that how you'll work or how? How are you gonna choose?

Mieke 22:52

The first thing we started is to have a group of animals. Developed so you can have an actual comparative anatomy feature regarding this and that were mollusks. So we developed a a squid, an octopus, two snails, and yeah. Was that just a moment? And Oh yeah. And the muscle. So all those are basically mollusks, but they look completely different. What we did is put them together standardized colors for the organ systems, and an application that enables you to compare them side by side. So you can see, okay, the, for example, the brain of Molo is very specific because the esophagus runs through it. So you can see that in any mollus you find, you can see it in an octopus, in a squid, in a muscle, and in snails. And that was the first. Group of animals we did. And from there out we tested it on universities and they said we want to have marine animals in it. We want to have. Fishes. We want to have sea urgent and so on. So all those animals are basically the animals that are in the comparative anatomy curriculum on almost every university, college, and high school. And from there out, if we run out of animals, then we can go on demand and so on.

Abigail 24:48

Very interesting. So you're raising money and you're trying to get new university clients. Is there anything else that, about this that, that we should know that you wanna talk about?

Paul 25:03

Yeah, so we are,

Abigail 25:04

aspect?

Paul 25:05

of course we're reaching out to clients 'cause there, there are a lot of universities around the world that all teach biology and marine biology. So we're trying to reach out to clients also to. Even better understands their exact needs because it varies from university to universities, how they work, what kind of classes they give, where this can be applied. So we're looking for more universities, more clients of

Abigail 25:30

Yeah.

Paul 25:30

but also more potential partners. So we're very interested to work with zoos and aquariums but also in a veterinary, the wider veterinary fields. It will be interesting to see. Where the exec needs are, because we talked to, of course, a number of potential clients and partners in the veterinary field. And you can see that there, there are really very specific solutions that are required now and then but we are still partly still researching that. So would be really interesting to hear back from the field where the needs are Also for the types of animals or the types of animals and also the specific needs. For the solutions.

Mieke 26:10

Yep.

Abigail 26:11

yeah. Are you. Is this a competitive landscape or are you creating a new category in the animal kingdom?

Paul 26:23

Yeah it's it's not completely new, but but the quality it lacks quality usually what has been done in the past. So either the models are not, let's say, not good enough, not detailed enough, not accurate enough. Or in some other cases there have been individual projects often at universities where they maybe make one model paid for by a grant, but then when the money stops, the project stops as well, and the model just disappears. It's not available for the wider scientific community.

Abigail 26:54

Interesting.

Paul 26:55

In a way, this is. Quite revolutionary. You can, see this in the human medicine fields, the human medical fields. You can see the use of 3D very accurate, detailed, 3D models of the human body. But for most animals, it doesn't exist at all. Or the models are not very good, and if they're not accurate enough. Then they're not of much use for a veterinarian, for example, but also not for scientific studies.

Abigail 27:21

This is so important that we capture this, especially if we're losing the human skillset to dig into this and to be able to continue to pass that along. So thank you for that. You're now seasoned entrepreneurs. Ed, you're the first company that I've interviewed that is really focusing on an educational product. Do you have advice for other people that aren't quite as advanced as you are in their project for for their startups?

Paul 27:57

So do you mean generally or in the educational field?

Abigail 28:01

Whichever it could be both.

Paul 28:04

Maybe it's general, but I think it's very important to really get to know your clients and the struggles of your clients very well. You really need to know where you can make sure you have an added value. Does you really solve the problem for your customer?

Abigail 28:21

Yeah.

Paul 28:22

Rather than just being a nice to have, and that's sometimes that can be challenging because even if you have a solution for something, the problem needs to be urgent enough for the client. So that is really something you need to research very well also how your client works and how, why, and how they would be able to spend money for your product.

Mieke 28:44

Yeah.

Abigail 28:45

Yep. Mika,

Mieke 28:50

Yeah, that's.

Abigail 28:51

you have anything to add to that?

Mieke 28:52

Now that's basically it. Know your clients and depending on the clients, adjust your marketing strategy and know what price strategy you need for those. Because the educational market is a diff, totally different market than consumer market or

Abigail 29:18

Yeah.

Mieke 29:18

business to business market.

Abigail 29:22

Yeah. Alright, I think that sounds like a good advice. Thank you for coming on today and I'm sure viewers are gonna be really, or listeners, sorry. I'm sure listeners are gonna be interested to hear about this beautiful work that you're doing.

Mieke 29:38

Thank you.

Paul 29:39

Yeah. Thank you.