Muscle System Pro II shows the great potential of iPad apps

I felt compelled to respond to Andrew's comment above having twice been in contact with the company that creates these apps (I now have 3).

Being able to rotate the 3D models in real time is not only visually exiting but it helps greatly in visualizing a muscle's relationship with those around it. Because the iPad is as much a "show to" as a "look at" device, I feel it is apps like these that will help the iPad make a telling impact in the field of education.

As mentioned above I twice e-mailed the company responsible for these apps (concerning the heart pro app), both times I got an answer within a couple of hours, and both of my issues were addressed in the next update. My point being this is a company that has bought into the concept of the iPad and its future in education and is continually pushing the boundaries of what can be done with it as well as continually improving and updating their existing apps.

P.S. The 'people icon' is actually "a merge layers" icon - used to merge layers together with different opacities as in the ability to integrate the nervous and vascular systems in the heart app and I understand that future versions will allow you to merge different layers of the muscle system - so you can see where they join the bone.

Patrick Merry, could you please tell us where are you a faculty member?

I am a medical student- Had the old version of this and got the free upgrade.
I love it- it is so much better than it was before.
Not a cheap app for sure- but a cool reference tool that I have used every week for the last six months.

I have the Motorola Xoom which has a app called Google Body (which was displayed in Xoom commercials). It is a 3D model of the female body. It has different layers showing skin, myscle, bone, vascular, and nerve systems. You can click on any part to show the name of it. How does this compare to what Muscle System Pro provides?

I am a professor, teaching anatomy in Ohio and I can tell you this is the best muscle system I have ever seen - the information is accurate and so is the model despite a small mistake in the neck and the gluteus maximus that I am sure they will fix in next version - but the way in which you can interact with app is beyond anything I have seen - this is far beyond anything else - truly fantastic.

I'd say this app would be more powerful on a desktop and not on a tablet. With the better screen and a keyboard I'm thinking the interaction with the app improves when migrated to a desktop environment.

Tablets are the future of computing? A significant niche of computing, I would agree. The future of computing? I wouldn't take it that far.

I bought the app after reading this article, and I regret it. Here's the review I wrote for the app store:

This is a good app for general identification of the muscles, but not a serious reference. A medical student or artist could use this to get familiar with the general identification and placement of all the muscles, but not as a model to draw from or as a real medical reference -- it’s just not accurate enough.

The program works well, but, for this price I expected that the information presented would be much more rigorous and complete. Instead, it just presents a simplified version of muscles without the subtleties of tendons, fascia and multiple origins and insertions. Granted, modeling the human body is an extremely complicated task.

Although the written notes are correct, the visual presentation contains many inaccuracies. For example the gluteus maximus should join the IT band, but it doesn’t, and the depiction of the zygomatic muscles is not at all realistic. Tendons and fascia are mostly missing -- the long head of the biceps femoris should share a common tendinous origin with the semitendinosus, but in this model they have separate origins.

Also, you can’t work with single muscles -- you can only add and remove groups. Consequently, you can’t see the insertions of an external muscle (e.g. the latissimus dorsi) because they’re hidden under other muscles.

The bones are accurately modeled, and the depictions of muscles are attractive. If you zoom in as far as possible (not very much) the image becomes blurry. The ability to zoom varies with the body part (you can zoom more on the knee than on the pelvis).

The application contains good information about the origin, insertion and action of every muscle, about as much as can be fit in six lines of text.

The program works well, and is relatively rapid on iPad 1. You need to wait a second for new views to load. Vertically, a swipe changes between two views -- you can’t stop halfway. You can however rotate horizontally as much or as little as you like. You cannot strip down to a bare skeleton -- you are limited to the the deepest muscles.

Finally, I could not figure out what the gray box icon and people icon did on the toolbar -- they were never active.

Shout out to my Abductor Digiti Minimi. Hands down the most AWESOME muscle in the human body.

cannibals would love this too