# Denver Visible Human Female lower-limb reference

Thor E. Andreassen, Donald R. Hume, Landon D. Hamilton, Karen E. Walker, Sean E. Higinbotham and Kevin B. Shelburne, University of Denver Center for Orthopaedic Biomechanics: **Three Dimensional Lower Extremity Musculoskeletal Geometry of the Visible Human Female and Male**, Scientific Data 10, 34 (2023), [DOI 10.1038/s41597-022-01905-2](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-022-01905-2). [Female data DOI 10.56902/COB.vh.2022.1](https://doi.org/10.56902/COB.vh.2022.1). Derived from the NLM Visible Human Female cryosections. Licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Source processing citation requested by the data authors: Andreassen et al., **An Automated Process for 2D and 3D Finite Element Overclosure and Gap Adjustment using Radial Basis Function Networks** (2022), [arXiv:2209.06948](https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2209.06948); journal version, **Automated 2D and 3D finite element overclosure adjustment and mesh morphing using generalized regression neural networks**, Medical Engineering & Physics 126 (2024), [DOI 10.1016/j.medengphy.2024.104136](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medengphy.2024.104136).

Downloaded from the original surface-data directory, data/VHF_surfaces, of Ingvild S. Devold, Marie E. Rognes and Padmini Rangamani's **muscle-growth** repository, pinned at [16b27795d6b8d1db06f7523f9d9eedea959935ae](https://github.com/ingvilddevold/muscle-growth/tree/16b27795d6b8d1db06f7523f9d9eedea959935ae/data/VHF_surfaces). Its README explicitly separates the original geometry's CC BY 4.0 license from its software's MIT license. This import uses the original surface-data directory, not the processed growth-simulation meshes.

**Source stage:** these are the mirror's `_smooth.stl` surfaces. The original DU release distinguishes smoothed surfaces from its final overlap-corrected release. Identity with that final release and overlap removal are unverified. We do not describe these meshes as the final overlap-free stage.

Local adaptations: one proper rigid rotation, common ground/center translation and millimetre-to-metre conversion for the entire assembly; exact coincident-position welding; area-weighted shared normals quantized to signed Int16; Float32 positions; unchanged triangles packed with Uint32 indices and deterministic gzip. Display spelling is normalized while preserving source filenames. No mesh simplification, added smoothing, shape change, synthetic tendon, cross-model fitting or registration was performed. See provenance.json for exact per-file source hashes and transform.

Independent lower-limb reference from the Visible Human Female. This is a single donor reference, not a complete female muscular system or a universal female body.

This pinned mirror contains files explicitly named _smooth.stl. The DU release distinguishes smoothed/resampled models from final overlap-corrected models. Equivalence to the final release and removal of inter-tissue overlap have not been verified; source overlaps may remain.

76 muscle components (38 per side), 28 bone labels, 16 cartilage components and 8 knee ligaments. Grouped foot meshes do not represent individually selectable constituent bones.

Patellar tendons and complete Achilles tendons are absent from the source reconstruction. No tendon bridges or synthetic missing anatomy have been added.

The source authors reconstructed damaged left knee-extensor tissue in the female specimen. Those muscles inherit the authors' reconstruction and are not untouched segmentations.

Native relative geometry is preserved by one rigid rotation, common translation and millimetre-to-metre conversion. This assembly is not registered to the HRA organs, BoneHub skeleton or any male atlas.

This static surface collection supplies no validated joint rig, muscle attachment landmarks or muscle deformation model; its shape is not evidence of validated motion.