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I was wondering if there is a package to plot a 2D representation of the outline of a human body? Being in 2D, plotting either the front/back/side at any one time would presumably be the easiest way to accomplish this. The output would be something similar to this (though this is not the best use of such a diagram):

enter image description here

Source: http://emj.bmj.com/content/20/5/434.full

Ideally, plotting a subset of data as is done for the world with map(regions="Australia") would be possible in the form body.map(regions="left.hand"). In that respect, would it be appropriate to base such a model on the maps package?

TylerH
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thelatemail
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    Not sure if this is a package yet but i can certainly see the usefulness of such a package in the medical field. In the way we chloropleth a geographic map this could be chlorplethed. Great question +1 – Tyler Rinker May 20 '12 at 04:25
  • some extensions to Chernoff faces suggest themselves. – baptiste May 20 '12 at 04:29
  • @TylerRinker - exactly. The question arose out of trying to find a less tedious way to colour body sections for my studies than doing it manually in Inkscape. – thelatemail May 20 '12 at 04:30
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    the grImport package can import vector graphics in R, and offers some subsetting capabilities. Most likely you would need to first edit a nice vector outline in e.g. Inkscape, perhaps split the path into meaningful sections (e.g. left hand), and import it as grid.symbols. – baptiste May 20 '12 at 04:41
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    there was also [some post](http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/06/21/how-to-fit-an-elephant/) about fitting an elephant with 5 numbers – I wonder how many it would take to parametrise the human body. – baptiste May 20 '12 at 04:44
  • I smell a very useful package. – Tyler Rinker May 20 '12 at 04:53
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    In some way though, bodies are really 3-dimensional for the most part. When you want to see a left foot, say, the angle of the projection could matter a great deal. Ideally you'd want some 3D model, and take either contourlines or 2D projections. But I guess a basic 2D outline is already a good start. – baptiste May 20 '12 at 05:06
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    @baptiste - agreed. The ultimate I suppose would be to deal with points in 3D space and volume rather than area. I'll crawl before I can walk though! – thelatemail May 20 '12 at 05:14

1 Answers1

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I just had a look on clker.com for vector body graphics, and if you search for 'body' you see a lot of possible SVG files you could read in and plot.

Then I spotted this one:

http://www.clker.com/clipart-29915.html

which also links to a lot of 'Derived cliparts' showing similar bodies with other parts outlines. It only seems to be the upper torso, but its a nicely-layered SVG file where all the bits could be drawable individually.

There's also plenty of outline body figures (including, I just found, the male figure that went on the Voyager or Pioneer space probe plaques!) and skeletons, including some very well labelled skeletons impressed.

Organising all this into some kind of "body.map" function should be possible - read in from SVG file, select components, plot - but requires some careful thinking and more specification according to requirements.

Spacedman
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  • Thanks - the skeleton in particular could be helpful. Another I have found with a good outline + arteries is here on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arterial_System_en.svg – thelatemail May 20 '12 at 07:59
  • Accepting at the moment as gives clear guidance on getting started. – thelatemail May 24 '12 at 23:36