Scott Barrows

Biomedical Visualization

Head of the Class

Barrows also heads the Biomedical Visualization graduate program at UIC. Considered one of the top programs in the world and one of only five accredited programs in the U.S., the UIC program accepts just 12 students each year. “All of the programs are excellent and very small,” says Barrows. “Our faculty and graduates have won many of the profession’s top awards the last few years. The faculty here is phenomenal.”

The UIC program also is considered the most advanced technologically. “Fourteen years ago,” he says, “I would have told people not to go into this profession. At the time, it was primarily print oriented, and there were too many people in it. The real breakthroughs were the Internet and the explosion of multimedia, which brought about all the new ways of learning.

Early Adopters

“The great thing is,” Barrows adds, “UIC got on board with technology very early. We used the computer before anybody else, and when we really started combining art, science and technology, the medical illustration faculty jumped to the Mac.

“One student created a digital painting showing how anthrax works at a cellular level. Other students create animated sequences of normal and abnormal cellular events.”

“Some faculty members are doing things with virtual reality and research that are just way ahead — in fact, so far ahead, that applications are just now being identified. Faculty have actually produced VR journeys inside the body, but a lot of the hardware and software is proprietary. Only a few of our students go into that area because it’s so new, but the potential and future are tremendous.”

Students as Canvas

Barrows regards his students — who include animators, a computer gaming illustrator, graphic designers, fine artists, a biomedical engineer, pharmacologists and graduates from universities including Harvard, Yale, USC and Rice — as his canvas.

Students have already had their primary courses in Illustrator, Photoshop and Painter when they join Barrows’ courses in advanced imaging and “anything biomedical. In my classes, they apply everything they’ve learned to real-world experiences.

Cellular Events

“One student created a particularly timely project — a digital painting showing how anthrax works at a cellular level. Another student produced an innovative series of digital illustrations showing the blood supply for the brain. Other students create animated sequences of normal and abnormal cellular events.”

Like the program at UIC, the field of biomedical visualization remains small. Fewer than 600 practitioners worldwide are involved in visualizing medicine and science. “But our profession is overwhelmingly Macintosh,” says Barrows. “It’s just so much easier to use. It’s more dependable. It’s more intuitive. It’s faster and it’s just more elegant.”