Dassault Systèmes may be the only company bold enough to say that it will make a physiological equivalent of an entire human body, a true digital twin, that is good enough to simulate the efficacy of medicine and medical procedures. It was at the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, which dedicates a pavilion to digital health technologies and products, Dassault Systèmes was there to show how much progress it had made. On display were the Living Brain and the Living Heart.
A digital twin is like an opinion. Everyone has one and everyone thinks theirs is better than everyone else’s. We are flooded by announcements of digital twins from design software vendors. Most of the time, the digital twin presented is barely more than a 3D computer model to which a little nongeometrical information has been added. For example, a solid model of an assembly of parts with the addition of material data, motion, cost or some other information. Each time, we are assured that we are witnessing a complete digital twin.
To make sense of it all, we uphold the biological twin as the gold standard—and most digital twins offered pale by comparison. Invariably, they are created to match a physical object in a limited manner. A 3D model of a building of a building is as much a twin to the building itself as a storefront mannequin is to a human being. But it can grow over time during construction, like a real-life twin, we are told.
Of all the design software companies, Dassault Systèmes is the only one committed to having digital twins that are biologically equivalent to humans. The company is doing this with a deliberate, measured approach—one organ at a time—but the end goal is clear: a complete digital model of the human body. On this digital twin, doctors will be able to test drugs and procedures.
Levine and his Virtual Human Modeling team have gone on to add the living lung, the living brain and the living knee. We hear living kidneys are on the way.
At CES, Levine was surrounded by vendors with digital health solutions. He sees the digital twin as a way to unite them—under one skin. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Compared to the heart, the brain is still and closer to the surface of the body, making for clearer images and easier CT scans. While brain model geometry is easier to create, the functioning of the brain is more complex and less understood than the functioning of the heart. The brain has 86 billion neurons and modeling all their chemical and electrical activity at the cellular level is beyond the capability of computing into the near future.
Levine estimates that it will take 5 to 10 years to complete the map of the brain network—and the result will most likely be a model that can approximate cellular activity in a mezzo or macro manner. In an interview last August with engineering.com, Levine said the brain model currently is “representative.”
Attendees at CES were treated to a large volumetric display that used points of light to represent the attendee’s body, their heart and their brain. This was appropriate enough for a consumer electronics show, though we hope that more actual scans and displays would be shown at a medical convention. Visitors to Dassault Systèmes’ booth seemed most interested in seeing their digital twins follow their dance moves.
The Living Brain, like Dassault Systèmes’ other living part models, is a noble attempt to model living tissue by a company best known for modeling metal (as in aircraft and automobiles). How it can compete against virtual models and digital twins borne of the medical and scientific industry and academia remains unclear. The Brain Network Recovery Group (Brain NRG), a consortium of 16 scientists, offers The Virtual Brain (TVB) and claimed 37,252 downloads at the time of this writing.
For more on Steve Levine and the human digital twin project, see Dassault Systèmes Pioneers Virtual Human Modeling for New Approaches in Medicine.