London’s Heart Hospital teamed up with the extremely talented visual effects studio, Glassworks, to create HeartWorks, the most anatomically accurate 3D beating human heart.

The massive project was led by a team of three cardiac anesthesiologists at London’s Heart Hospital who were dissapointed with the absence of an accurate model of the heart to use for teaching transesophageal echocardiography (cardiac ultrasound). The procedure provides important details on the condition of a patient’s heart prior to undergoing heart surgery. It entails passing an ultrasound probe through the patients mouth and down into the esophagus. The ultrasound signal has to pass through the esophageal wall to get to the heart, which is just millimeters away.

More here, with links to the Heartworks site.