File:CT Scan of Dale Mahalko's brain-skull.jpg

English: A few years ago I had my first ever severe migraine with floaty sparkly things in the visual field, and I was worried this might be a sign of something severe. So I went in and had a CT scan done. The doctors said, everything is fine, no tumors, aneurysms, etc.

I said, can I have a copy of my medical images? Sure, for something like $10, I get all the scans on a CD, as DICOM encoded medical images.

This model of my brain was constructed using free software, OsiriX I think.

For this particular image, bone-density structures were subtracted out and rendered as black. I then converted the images to PNG and changed the black to represent transparency.

These individual slices were imported into Second Life where I built a very simple 3D display platform, stacking up the slices in open space, and the transparent layers allow the slices to take on a quasi-3D appearance.

The overall slices are enclosed inside a large box that is black on the inside and transparent on the outside, so the box is the black background seen in the image. Without the darkening box, the world of Second Life shows through the black regions of this image.