Medical Illustration Podcast - Report on AMI 2025 conference

MEDICAL ILLUSTRATION PODCAST

AMI 2025

Annual Conference in Grand Rapids, MI

Welcome back to the Medical Illustration podcast. This will be yet another conference review episode, from the 79th annual meeting of the Association of Medical Illustrators, in Grand Rapids Michigan, which just took place on July 16th through the 19th. It was a blast!

This was a great experience–I love attending the annual AMI conference. I get to reconnect with friends and professional colleagues, and the presentations are always excellent. This year was no exception of course. I was looking back on last year’s conference podcast, and it was really cool to compare and contrast the presentations from both years.

I am really looking forward to sharing a breakdown of this year’s scheduled talks and presentations and let all my listeners vicariously enjoy the 3 day immersion in the State-of-the-Art art, State-of-the-Art science, and State-of-the-Art communications, the state of Michigan, I was in a state of shock the whole time, from how much I was learning and being blown away by human awesomeness. It really fostered a positive state of mind.

Let’s get right into it!

WEDNESDAY, July 16th

Workshops

The conference officially began on Wednesday, July 16th. I was driving down from Toronto and arrived late Wednesday afternoon, so unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend any of the paid  workshops this year, but I’ll list them out so you get a sense of what was offered.

We had a Full Day Workshop, Modeling Protein Structures and Interactions for Molecular Illustrations and Animations with Dr. Derek Ng of University of Toronto. I love Derek, he’s the best. I would have loved to taken this workshop, where, paraphrasing from the conference site:

“you will gain hand-on experience in acquiring, evaluating, and integrating molecular structural data to model protein structures and their associated interactions. Dr. Ng had a series of mini-lectures, demos, exercises, and real-world case studies, for sharing general strategies and approaches for tackling a variety of molecular visualization projects.” including how to deal with practical issues such as cleaning up structural data, integrating multiple data sources to model missing/incomplete structures and interactions, and balancing the many factors to consider when deciding on whether a data source is right for a given project’s communication goals…The materials covered in this workshop will be applicable for most downstream 3D workflows/software (e.g., Maya, Cinema 4D, Blender, and 3ds Max).” 

So, a software agnostic teaching style, how progressive. Love it.

There was also a Half Day Workshop: Exploring the Thorax and Abdomen with Dr. Ryan Tubbs, Rylee Lane, and Dr. Amber Heard-Booth. Thanks to each of you for putting this together, these are always in demand. 

Paraphrasing from the conference brochure: “This hands-on workshop offers participants the chance to deepen their anatomical understanding of the cardiovascular, respiratory, and digestive systems through dissection and sketching of fully embalmed human bodies. …

While not dissecting, participants will have an opportunity to sketch from the completed teaching specimens in our active gross anatomy laboratory. Participants will be able to reference fifteen full cadavers and a full teaching collection of isolated organs in order to observe gross pathologies and to deepen their appreciation of human variation.” 

This is excellent. I love that this is a tradition we keep alive at the AM conferences. These are rare and valuable experiences. Having the opportunity to see in real life the full complexity of human anatomy and to draw from it? Think about it, this is a select and tiny percentage of the human population globally AND historically. Drawing from real cadavers is a vital experience for all who partake in the craft of Medical Illustration.

I’m extremely grateful I’ve had that experience in the past, but unfortunately not at this meeting. I’m sorry that I missed both these workshops but I’m sure they were greatly enjoyed by all those who attended. 

First Timer’s Workshop 

Now back to the conference, I did on Wednesday, sit down for the First Timers Workshop shortly after I arrived, which was a brief conference intro and Association overview by  Jill Gregory. Jill, has been active in the AMI for many years, joining in 1997, and was in fact AMI president for the 2022-2023 term.

A few highlights from this talk, which, I don’t know if I’ve ever covered before, my apologies for that, but thank you Jill Gregory:

Numero Uno. What is the AMI? Well, the Association of Medical Illustrators was founded in 1945, members are mostly professionals in the field but also include current students and educators, and affiliates. The AMI promotes the field and continuing education of its members, it also legislates and lobbies on behalf of its members, and fosters the community.

Shout out to AMI HQ (Jen Duckworth & Kaitlyn Mathews) at AMR

Jill shared  a brief rundown of all the AMI committees, Membership types, and, member benefits (note, I just want to mention at this point that I am not sponsored by the AMI, they are not paying me to say this, but I do want to share the list from Jill’s presentation). Jill listed member benefits such as:  

• the member’s HUB and the discussions that take place there,

• the focus groups and committees

• job postings

• business documents and resources

• the association webinar archive

• CMI Study materials 

• and Pricing and Salary surveys

Jill spoke about the Vesalius Trust (a sister org), whose sole purpose is basically to provide scholarships to those seeking to go to formal school for medical illustration. I did a podcast with the Vesalius Trust a while back, to promote the Vesalius Trust-a-Thon which is like a scientific art jam they do every year in the fall. To be honest, I actually don’t think I knew this–Jill explained the purpose of the VT was that the AMI cannot give out scholarships due to its legal status , but VT can. That’s why it exists. It’s a legal, status, thing. So “yay” for Vesalius Trust!

Jill also mentioned the BCMI - another sister org, this one for certification. More about this in a later talk.

Jill also provided Essential Conference INFO

• conf app

  • Create your own schedule 

• Conf website (where I’m getting a lot of content for this podcast)

• Session types 

• Dress, pacing, nutrition & sleep

Oh yea, I actually did have to invoke all of these at this year’s conference. There’s always at least 1 formal night out where the whole conference gets all dressed up and fancy–it brings you back to those high school dances ya know, or like a wedding or something. IT’s fun! So you have to bring at least 1 nice outfit. Also pacing, yes. Man, guys. Pace yourselves. For sure. Nutrition. Load up on healthy food so you have the mental energy needed to absorb all this knowledge. Goodness, please, fuel that intellectual fire. And rest up too. I was out late a few nights, but at the AMI–I do it anyway, because I’m surrounded by wonderful people. 

Jill went over some of the Social highlights of every meeting:

• Salon opening 

• Mentorship mixer

• Awards lunch

• Silent auction (Fri-Sat)

• VT events

• Bon Voyage Party

But seriously, the entire conference is a rich and stimulating Networking opportunity! (Roundtable lunch, Tech showcase, the entire time!)

Lastly, Jill recommended getting involved with volunteer committees, and I second this recommendation! No better way to get to know people in the industry, and build professional relationships–this is part of building a career. Give some of your time and it will come back. You will build Friendships, experience Personal and Professional growth, build a Broad network of human resources, and open Career opportunities for yourself. 

Thank you so much, Jill Gregory for this intro session to the AMI conference. I don’t think I’ve ever put this out there like this but again, this is a report of what was said at the conference and I think it makes total sense to provide a “primer session” like this. I think that’s a great way to welcome newcomers.   

Salon Opening

Now of course, another great way to welcome anyone and everyone to come learn more about the field, the industry, the discipline of Medical and Scientific Illustration is the annual AMI Salon. This is a temporary art gallery that only lasts 3 days a year. This year’s Salon Opening was interesting because they had the professional and student categories of the Salon separated into 2 different spaces, one was in like a small ballroom, and the other was in like, a really wide hallway space. I don’t know how to describe it. Now, I’m going to be blunt here, not my favorite way the Salon has been done but it was still OK, and it wasn’t really anyone’s fault it was just the layout of the venue really. It had a odd feel to it–this hotel in Grand Rapids. The best way I could describe it was, OK maybe not a MC Escher drawing, but a real world physics -based layout inspired by MC Escher, how bout that? It was strange. Anyway..

Mentorship Mixer

The first night concluded with the Mentorship Mixer. This is where all the mentors and mentees from the AMI Mentorship program get together and often meet in the real world for the very first time! And you know what? That alone almost makes it totally worth it. Dude, there’s something really magical about someone you’ve been talking to in video for the past year suddenly standing right there in front of you in the physical world–I like it. I think it’s cool. People are never the exact height I think they are based on video. It always throws me a little bit off.

THURSDAY, July 17th

Thursday began with a Presidential Address, delivered by AMI President Nobles Green. You may remember Nobles from a previous episode of the Medical Illustration Podcast–he was a guest! I’ll be sure to include a link in the show notes to that. 

Nobles welcomed us all and gave us a few updates on what he and the Association have been up to the past year. He was also very candid about concerns that we’ve seen raised in various online discussions. There was a survey done by a UIC student a little while back on the state of the industry and employment trends and the challenges new grads have been facing. I will be sure to include a link to this particular survey in the show notes. The job market has been tough. I do appreciate though that individuals like Nobles Green, Jill Gregory who I just mentioned, and many many more AMI members–especially those involved with the Mentorship program–have been active and volunteering lots of their time to help people out as best they can.

Shout out to UIC grad Sarah Lung, who started an AMI membership dues aid drive. I believe this led directly to the creation of AMI’s Member Assistance Program, that Nobles announced in March of this year. 

Because we are an profession that sits in the center of a Venn diagram of  not just Science and Art, but also Communications, Design, Business, and Technology we are affected by the rapid and disruptive changes taking place in each of these sectors, and the AMI is very aware of this, and actively seeking to address whatever we can within the means of our capacity.

I would like to echo Nobles’ comments that building your professional network is a wise strategy for navigating the challenges of the job market and professional organizations such as, but not limited to, the AMI, are essentially designed to help you do that.

Keynote Dr Lindsey Fitzharris

Author, Television Host, YouTuber, and Medical Historian, Dr Lindsey Fitzharris provided the Keynote presentation. From the conference program, quote:

A Strange New Art: Piecing Together the Shattered Faces of World War I

From the moment the first machine gun rang out over the Western Front, one thing was clear: mankind’s military technology had wildly surpassed its medical capabilities. Bodies were battered, gouged, hacked, and gassed. The First World War claimed millions of lives and left millions more wounded and disfigured. In the midst of this brutality, however, there were also those who strove to alleviate suffering. One such individual was the pioneering plastic surgeon Sir Harold Gillies, whom together with an extraordinary interdisciplinary team that included dentists, artists, and mask-makers, taught himself and others how to repair the burned and broken faces of the injured soldiers under his care. At its core, this is a story about how medicine and art can merge, and of what courage and imagination can accomplish in the presence of relentless horror.

Dr Fitzharris took us on a fascinating journey through the history of WW1, pulling anecdotes from her book “The Facemaker”. 

A few highlights I took from this talk: 

There were high rates of facial injuries in WWI; with numbers around 280,000 men from Britain, France and Germany alone. 

These injuries presented unique Medical challenges: loss of function and aesthetics. Facial injuries could often be worse than loss of limbs because of the way people respond—I imagine this is still true today though not as harshly. 

Face reconstruction represents a true blending of art and medicine. This was among several other medical advances that emerged from the first WW: anesthesia, plastic surgery, blood banks. Unfortunately these also fed the war machine b/c healed soldiers would then be sent back to the front lines.

Dr Fitzharris introduced us to Harold Gillies (Father of modern plastic surgery) - Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup dedicated to facial reconstruction, following the Battle of the Somme, Charles Valadier (dentist), and Henry Tonks an artist who did portraits in color, photography being limited to BW at the time who also  documented surgeries as well. These included some diagrammatic surgical illustrations Dr Fitzharris shared which I thought were really cool. 

Now Plastic surgery did exist prior to WWI but it was limited to small areas. WWI represented a major turning point for plastic surgery. Contrasting with previous conflicts like The American Civil War where treatment paid no attn to aesthetics, there was no knowledge of germ theory, and because injuries to the head and face were more likely to cause fatalities, there were few cases to work from. In WWI there was still no anesthesia (they used ether), but there was knowledge of germ theory so they at least tried to reduce the risk of infections, and they did pay attn to aesthetic outcome. Gillies approach was founded in the belief that good aesthetics equals good function.

Fun fact, Gillies hospital banned mirrors. This is because injured Faces can look worse before they looked better and Gillies and his staff did not want to cause unintentional harm. So around this era patients would often wear masks, mainly for the comfort of other people, and one mask maker she mentioned in particular was Anna Coleman Ladd.

Dr Fitzharris described her work as Narrative non-fiction : dropping the reader right into the action (rare diary entry from a soldier). Faces were only shown in her book and talk of soldiers whose story was shared in the book, for example, Private Ashworth’s story. These were heart wrenching to hear but undeniably informative and illuminating. 

If you’d like to  learn more about Dr Gillies you can pick up his book, “The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery” by Dr Gillies. And of course please check out the books by Dr Fitzharris:

• The Butchering Art

• The Facemaker

• Plague-Busters

• Sleuthhound (inspiration for Sherlock Holmes)

A fun highlight in this talk was seeing the different book covers for different countries. Dr. Fitzharris’s husband: AdrianTeal.com did cover art for the American version, referencing the Gillies’ book I just mentioned.

This was closed out by a lively Q&A. Dr Fitzharris expanded on some of the resources in her talk, we learned that Dr Gillies’ great grand nephew read the audiobook edition, that’s awesome! She shared some book recommendations, and confirmed a rumour that she owns Houdini’s water tank! That’s incredible! Apparently she’s an ardent collector of medical and historical rarities. Rock on!

Dr Tyler Sloan

Next we had Dr Tyler Sloan, an expert in neuroscience  data visualization, presenting: The Elaborate Beauty of the Nervous System. From the conference program, quote: 

In this talk, neuroscientist-turned 3D animator Tyler Sloan traces the evolution of neuron imagery—from the earliest microscopic drawings to modern 3D, data-driven representations… 

…The lecture traces influential developments in how neurons have been depicted historically, the rise of oversimplified textbook schematics, and the recent surge in high-resolution reconstructions made possible by electron microscopy. Sloan demonstrates how visualization techniques not only reflect scientific understanding but can also shape it. Through examples drawn from his recent work using large open datasets—he demonstrates how data visualization techniques can be used with 3D rendering to accurately convey the real density and complexity of the brain, to help us to appreciate the elaborate beauty of the nervous system.

This was a fascinating dive into the world of neuroscience visualization, taking us from the first crude drawings of brain cells to today's mind-blowing 3D connectomes that map entire nervous systems. Dr. Sloan started us off in the late 1800s, in the laboratories of two names you might recognize: Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramón y Cajal.

Golgi was an Italian pathologist who stumbled upon something revolutionary while examining cadavers for brain tumor pathology. He developed what he called the "Black Reaction" method, creating striking silhouettes of brain cells. In an era before microphotography existed, Golgi was making the first data-informed renditions of neurons. Interestingly, Golgi's drawings show no spaces between cells. This wasn't for aesthetics or a limitation of his technique. Golgi genuinely didn't believe these spaces existed. He thought the brain was one continuous network, like a microscopic vast 3D spider web. 

Enter Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the man we now call the father of neuroscience. Cajal looked at the same Golgi-stained specimens and saw something completely different – individual cells with gaps between them. This became known as the "neuron doctrine," and it fundamentally changed how we think about brain function.

Dr. Sloan then yanked us back into the modern era with an observation I’m sure many of us consider embarrassing: those smooth, uniform neurons we’ve all done a rendering of at some point. This idealized image can be traced back to a single textbook from 1897 – Barker's "Neuron." This became the template for how we've been drawing neurons for over a century.

These are examples of one of those silly little mistakes that get repeated over and over in medical and scientific illustration. Now, in my opinion, I DO think there are many illustrators who were aware that these simplified neurons were inaccurate. Many people have done good renditions (David Goodsell, RV Krstic come to mind). Others perhaps were capable but chose to depict them more simplified for various reasons–perhaps it was a conscious choice for a specific audience, or for the sake of a larger narrative. That’s the excuse I’m going with for mine. I know I knew neurons had more complexity than what I was showing when I made my Masters research project on concussions almost 15 years ago. I swear I was aware, but at that point in my skill development, I honestly only knew how to tackle a portion of that complexity, and to the degree I did, I also had time limits on how much detail I could cram in. Nonetheless I will concede the point Dr. Sloan, these are inaccurate, and neuroscientists will notice. 

Real neurons are incredibly elaborate and diverse – more like intricate trees with thousands of branches, each one unique. Real neurons are littered with dendrites like they were dipped in glitter, and there’s an incredibly diverse cast of characters–like lining up for the newest foodie hot spot in downtown Toronto on a Friday night during Pride month.

If you recall Golgi's staining technique from earlier, well, turns out it only reveals less than 5% of the neurons in any given sample. Imagine trying to understand a forest by looking at one out of every twenty trees – that's essentially what early neuroscientists were working with.

The 1950s brought electron microscopy, and suddenly scientists could see synapses – the tiny gaps between neurons that Cajal had theorized about. This was proof that the brain wasn't one continuous web, but billions of individual cells communicating across microscopic spaces. Fast forward half a century, and we enter the age of connectomics – the ambitious goal of mapping every neural connection in a complete nervous system. This

I first became aware of this terminology from the book “The Connectome” by Sebastian Seung, published in 2012, the year after I graduated. I was still on a neuroscience buzz around that time. I was trying to keep up with science so for a time I had a side hobby of reading articles on brain matters you might say. Anyway, I stumbled on this book. I think this was an early publication in this field so some of the info in it might be outdated at this point, but, I’m still going to include a link in the show notes because I personally found it to be a good read on the topic. 

OK, so, the field of connectomics, the study of the microstructure of the brain and pursuit of mapping every single individual cell of this bioarchitecture, began with the humblest of tasks. Mapping the connectome of everyone’s favourite model organism: C. elegans, a tiny worm with just 302 neurons. You might think, "302 neurons? Sweet? This’ll be easy!" Buuut creating the first complete 3D neural map actually took decades. The first complete connectome from C Elegans was only just achieved in 2018, just a few years ago. Scale up to a slightly more complex organism, let’s say a fruit fly, and now we’re talking over 139,000 neurons. To put that in perspective, if each neuron were represented by a single pixel, you'd need a 100-foot-wide 4K television to display the entire network. That’s a serious challenge that calls for every tool we can find. Today's connectomics projects use a powerful combination of scanning electron microscopy, artificial intelligence, computer vision, and global collaborations. 

This brings us to a fascinating modern challenge: TMI – too much information. Historical brain illustrations were essentially down-sampled versions of reality, showing just the highlights. Modern techniques give us dense reconstructions of ALL cells, which creates a visualization nightmare. Scientists like Dr. Sloan have developed clever solutions. For example, "color jitter" – a technique highlighted in the Nightingale data visualization journal. Imagine trying to color-code different layers of the brain cortex. Too little color variation, and you just see layers with no individual cells. Too much variation, and you can see individual cells but can't distinguish the layers. Adjusting the randomization settings of your color jitter helps strike this delicate balance. Hahaha. I’m laughing because this is just such a quintessential “3D workflow” style task. Where you adjust settings of a random pattern until you get something to look just right, and after spending way too much time doing this, you ask yourself, is this art? Am I making art? Is art and masochism the same thing? 

Well, there is intentionality and design thinking at play here. For example another technique Dr. Sloan demonstrated was selective highlighting. Imagine the optic lobe of a fly brain organized in visual columns, with topographical color mapping revealing hidden patterns. And there's "distinct coloring by cell type" – attempting to make each individual cell distinguishable in a network of thousands.

Modern neuronal landscape visualizations aren't just flashy images – they're essential tools for understanding how the brain works. Recent research, like Lappalainen's 2024 Nature paper, uses these connectome-constrained networks to actually predict neural activity across the fly visual system.

One of the most exciting developments is data-driven motion design. Scientists are creating 3D animations directly from research data, like those featured in the MICrONS Nature paper. These aren't artist interpretations – they're dynamic visualizations where every movement and color represents actual biological data. The animations use consistent color coding and visual encoding that matches the scientific papers, creating a bridge between complex research and public understanding.

From the historical developments to contemporary examples shared in this talk, one thing becomes clear: how we visualize the brain directly shapes how we understand it. If this deep dive into neural visualization sparked your curiosity, I highly recommend checking out the original research papers linked in show notes, including the recent work on the fruit fly connectome and the MICrONS project. A big thanks to Dr. Salon for this incredible talk, and reminding us that beautiful science often lies in the complexity we're just beginning to understand.

Dr. Tyler Sloan links:

• Quorumetrix

• Lappalainen et al. Nature 2024 paper

• MICrONS Nature paper

• Nightingale data visualization journal

• Flywire.ai project

Dr Julia Phillips

After the lunch roundtable we had Dr Julia Phillips who presented:

“Seeing All Bodies: Size-Inclusive Illustration and the Challenges of Representation”

Medical illustration plays a critical role in shaping how medical professionals perceive, understand, and treat the human body, and also shapes how all people in society see themselves. For patients in larger bodies, representation can reinforce or challenge bias and stigma. The absence of large-bodied patients in depictions of health and pathology can also contribute to “othering” and erasure.

This session explores the intersection of size-inclusive medicine and visual culture, considering how medical illustration can contribute to or challenge weight bias. We will discuss the lived experiences of fat patients, the varied ways they see themselves, and how these experiences may be influenced by medical and public health messages. We will consider how illustrators can disrupt harmful narratives and represent fat bodies with sensitivity and inclusivity. Finally, we will raise unanswered questions for further ethical and scientific exploration.

This session invites dialogue on the responsibilities and possibilities for illustrators who aim to advance the health of all people.

Zooming out from the cellular world we now explore a crucial but often overlooked aspect of healthcare: how medical illustrations shape the way we see ourselves and how healthcare providers see their patients. Dr. Julia Phillips shared with us thoughts on size-inclusive medical illustration—work that challenges us to think deeply about representation, dignity, and the real impact of visual culture in medicine.

To understand why this work matters, we need to first acknowledge a difficult reality: anti-fat bias exists throughout our society and healthcare system. Dr. Phillips defines this as the attitudes, behaviors, and social systems that specifically target people in larger bodies.

This bias shows up in healthcare in profound ways. Research reveals that healthcare providers often view patients in larger bodies as lacking self-control, and consequently provide less time, warmth, and eye contact during appointments. These negative experiences lead to worse health outcomes—not because of body size itself, but because of how people are treated. 

Dr. Phillips advocates for what's called "size-inclusive care"—an approach that challenges our assumptions about weight and health. Here's what the research actually tells us: A meta-analysis of 20 long-term weight loss studies found that over time, most people regain lost weight. This means that recommending weight loss carries a risk of causing harm, particularly through restrictive dieting practices that can lead to weight cycling.

Size-inclusive care focuses on health behaviors rather than weight loss. The outcomes are remarkable: patients show lower blood pressure, more favorable lipid profiles, increased exercise, improved mood and self-esteem, better program adherence, and most importantly—no harmful weight cycling.

Now, let's talk about representation in medical illustration. Dr. Phillips analyzed 11 commonly used anatomy textbooks published between 2015 and 2025. The findings were striking:

• 81% of images featured light-skinned individuals

• Nearly 62% were male, with female representation primarily limited to reproductive structures

• Only 26% showed older adults

• Most concerning for our discussion today: larger bodies were represented in less than 1% of images—just two images total

This means that medical students and healthcare providers are learning from visual materials that essentially erase the existence of patients in larger bodies, except when pathology is being discussed.

Dr. Phillips points to a troubling pattern in how larger bodies are depicted when they do appear in media. We see two extremes: either over-the-top ridiculous portrayals focused on eating, or what she calls the "good fatty" archetype—people who are shown actively working on weight loss, or fitting into narrow acceptable roles. These representations aren't authentic to lived experience. They're performances of what society deems acceptable fatness, rather than depicting people in larger bodies as they actually exist—as whole, complex human beings deserving of dignity and quality healthcare.

So how do we create more inclusive medical illustration? Dr. Phillips references recommendations from the Urban Institute's data visualization community:

• Use people-first imagery that shows individuals as empowered and dignified

• Actively notice who's not being included in current representations

• Conduct focus groups with affected communities

• Reflect authentic lived experiences rather than stereotypes

Dr. Phillips concluded with a powerful reminder: the medical illustration community has the ability to shift narratives about what we depict as "normal" and "healthy." This is about creating healthcare environments where all patients can see themselves reflected with dignity, leading to better health outcomes for everyone.

The intersection of visual culture and healthcare equity might seem abstract, but as Dr. Phillips demonstrates, it has real consequences for how people experience healthcare and how providers deliver care.

The question isn't whether we should include diverse body types in medical education—it's how we can do so authentically, respectfully, and in ways that advance health for all people.

Thank you Dr Phillips for this presentation that encourages all medical illustrators to reflect on the visual messages in their own professional or personal contexts and consider what narratives they might be reinforcing or challenging.

Daisy Chung

Next up was was award-winning science illustrator and graphics journalist Daisy Chung who presented : 

Science Storytelling Through Visual Journalism

In this talk, …Daisy Chung will share practical insights and creative strategies for connecting audiences to complex topics through visual storytelling. Drawing from her experience at National Geographic, Scientific American, and now Reuters Graphics, she will highlight the evolving role of illustration in journalism—from print to interactive digital platforms. Attendees will get a behind-the-scenes look at the visual reporting process, including Daisy’s contributions to The Fentanyl Express, a Pulitzer Prize-winning year-long investigative project, and learn how thoughtful design and collaboration can bring clarity—and emotional resonance—to difficult medical and scientific subjects.

Daisy started off on an autobiographical note, speaking on her early start and interest in infographics with a focus on climate and biology—she shared some pieces on deep sea mining and nutrition. She's worked with some heavy hitters—National Geographic, Scientific American, and now Reuters Graphics. Quite an impressive resume! It also turns out that you may have run across Daisy’s work and not known it–she’s worked on numerous projects at WikiHow. Here  she learned some crucial lessons that left a lasting impact on her illustration approach since. The first is that your audience may resonate with your art style. Perhaps you hit the mark, and then your viewers rally around the aesthetic you’ve established. Also: the audience comes first, not your art. Wise words to live by in our industry for sure, we can easily get so caught up in making something look beautiful that we forget whether it actually serves the people trying to understand it, right?

Daisy took this philosophy and utilized it in UX design work–redesigning WikiHow's homepage—which, by the way, is still live today. 

Throughout this talk Daisy demonstrated her illustration chops and showed how she was constantly asking higher-level questions about the work. For example, “why is science illustration important in journalism?’ and “How do you make the audience care?” Well this is one of the benefits of our line of work, because illustrations don't just explain, they can also evoke emotion and show someone put care into communicating this message. Illustrations can soften polarizing topics, making them vital elements to reach wider audiences, and after all, illustration IS information in and of itself. It’s a unique and potent form of information.

Here’s an example of a really smart approach to the kind of work Daisy is doing. She mentioned when starting out a journal illustration piece to consider the “text layer” of the design, and she showed how she did this by blocking out the text as visual elements in a composition. You could see this principle being used across all the examples she used in her presentation.

Daisy took us into an in-depth overview of the workflow on a few specific projects, beginning with her work on "The Fentanyl Express"—this was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative project with Reuters. The behind-the-scenes process she took us through felt like a guided tour into a Breaking Bad episode.

First she employed a simple but powerful principle: start with dumb questions. "What is fentanyl?" I mean hey, don't assume your audience knows what you know, right?

Then comes the deep dive—tons of reading and research. When you’re working with a team of journalists for an outfit like Reuters you get to take research to the next level, and boy did they ever. They actually bought equipment and supplies for making fentanyl. Not to actually make drugs, obviously, but to understand the process they were illustrating. They worked with undercover correspondents on the ground, who were live on site in Fentanyl chem labs in Mexico. Even with all this intense newsroom production, they still started with low-stakes pencil sketches, and gathered feedback from people outside the production team early in the process. Daisy and her team eventually found themselves illustrating the Fentanyl manufacturing process so thoroughly they had to pull back on some details–they didn’t want to accidentally give people a recipe to make illegal drugs obviously.

The next project Daisy shared was on the Menstrual Cycle—When the Cycle Stops, a visually engaging exposition on menstrual health and hypothalamic amenorrhea showing how visual journalism can tackle topics that are often misunderstood or stigmatized. She walked us through her 4-part, workflow:

1. What's the point? - The idea phase

2. What's known versus unknown? - Primary research, understanding what's normal versus not normal

3. How do you emphasize your point? - Sketching the story

4. What does it look like? - Developing visual style

Daisy deliberately moved away from the typical pastel conventions you see in women's health content. Instead, she used glitch effects, circular motifs, and traditional watercolor hybridized with digital media. It was incredible. It was beautiful. It was magical. Even in the text copy, Daisy demonstrated thoughtful consideration—using "people" instead of "women" to avoid stigmatizing certain groups or medical practices.

In the Q&A, someone asked about bringing in collaborators meaningfully, and Daisy's answer was gold: Don't get too attached to a style too early. Use rough sketches because they allow for flexibility. And here's the key—you have to show people something, not just describe it. Another thing she said was: "Communicate your enthusiasm for the topic, and it will be contagious." Yes! Love that.

I think what’s so captivating about Daisy's approach to illustration is that, even though she’s obviously operating on a high performance level, the refined aesthetic is not the end goal, it’s the mechanism of delivery. She's solving communication problems. Whether it's climate change, public health, or complex social issues, she's figured out how to make the abstract concrete, the complex simple, and the distant personal.

Daisy’s work reminds us that in an age of information overload, it's not enough to just have the facts. You need to help people connect with those facts. And sometimes, that connection happens not through more data, but through more humanity in how we present that data.

OMG, this was fantastic! Thank you so much Daisy for your presentation at this year’s AMI.

Andrea Kim

Closing out the first day of talks we had BVIS alum and former staff fellow at the FDA, Andrea Kim who joined us virtually to speak on “Using a Knowledge-Based Framework for Generating More Equitable Al Training Data in Medical Imaging” 

From the conference program, quote: 

This presentation will introduce an open-source skin simulation framework that leverages medical visualization expertise to generate synthetic dermatological images across diverse human skin tones, lesion characteristics, and imaging conditions. By applying knowledge-based models with advanced visualization techniques, we enable the generation of skin images with controlled variation of parameters. We will demonstrate how this framework integrates medical illustration principles to create diverse training datasets for AI applications.

The framework for synthetic image generation encompasses two primary components:

1. An automated pipeline developed in Houdini's Python interface for generating procedural 3D models of skin tissue layers, blood networks, and lesions, and

2. A spectral rendering methodology in Mitsuba 3 that produces photorealistic images with precise control over wavelength-dependent optical properties of each skin layer.

We will present quantitative results demonstrating how these synthetic images can supplement limited real datasets for AI model training and validation. The session will conclude with future applications and the potential role of medical illustrators in creating more equitable healthcare AI systems.

This talk was actually hilarious, and I mean that in the best possible way. Andrea was sharp, witty and charismatic and she presented a complex and dense technical talk in a way that felt like reading a comic with your ears. I have an elementary level of experience with Houdini, the software she was demonstrating–so I could follow along kinda OK and had a sense of what she was showing at points. Houdini, for those that don’t know, is a really powerful 3D animation software that is especially good at running complex simulations like explosions, and other particle physics. This was her keystone tool for manifesting a digital investigation into training an AI to better understand human skin tones. Heavy stuff. I was able to keep up with what she was showing to a degree, but for sure this is not a tool for everyone.

Andrea began with a look at a Systematic Exclusion in Current Datasets: a lack of diversity in skin tones of images being input into an AI model that is meant to help with diagnosing skin cancer. Uh, yea that’s a problem. Andrea showed there is a clear bias in AI training datasets being used for skin imaging applications, with a severe underrepresentation in darker skin tones. Current AI datasets being trained have <5 % of dark skinned patients included (seems even smaller to her).  There is also a Lack of Transparency, in other words, as I understood it, it’s hard to get a straight answer from some of these AI model developers on what kinds of images they're using and where they’re getting them, ya know? Like hello, what exactly is being included in your dataset? Only 3.6% of FDA-approved AI medical devices–she explained this term by the way, cause you can’t really call it an app or a program, it’s something else. That something else they’ve decided to classify it as is a “device”–right, so, only 3.6% of AI “devices” had any information about the race or ethnicity of tested users. Oh, and, Andrea was kind enough to provide references throughout her talk, I will make sure to link those in the show notes.

So, this all leads to Performance Disparities and negative Clinical Impacts. Using these AI tools, we end up with a 27-36% performance decrease for skin lesion detection when used on ethnically diverse populations. This means as Andrea puts it: “We’re building medical AI systems that work worse for people with darker skin tones.” Facts. Gross. Gross facts. 

This lead to the rationale for the Project:

1. Existing datasets are too small for robust AI training 

2. Poor feature specification in available datasets

3. Patient data collection is expensive and time-intensive

4. Limited generalizability across diverse population distributions

SoOo, the Solution was: Knowledge-Based Synthetic Generation. The mission was to Design, develop, and open-source a knowledge-based computational tool using advanced physics models to generate unlimited photo-realistic skin images representing:

• Systematic skin tone diversity,

• Anatomical variation: varying skin thickness and various body locations–because why not, we’ve come this far, let’s keep going,

• AND variable lighting conditions for comprehensive training, because, hello, we’re 3D software empowered simulation coding employing math so complex we ran out of Greek characters we’re on to Sanskrit now level digital wizard medical illustrators.

My simple, simple brain understood this all as: we’re going to make photorealistic images with 3D rendering. OK. These are going to be really, really convincing images of skin cancer, as if it were a photo of skin cancer on a dark-skinned person, in order to teach an AI: hey, here’s what skin cancer looks like on people with darker skin tones.

Wow, what a project! This sounds like a pretty massive undertaking but it doesn’t take much imagination to see the practical applications. The way Andrea described this sounded way more professional than what I just said. 

She shared the ROC-AUC measure of ai generated accuracy. That stands for “Receiver-operating characteristic” ROC, and “Area under the curve AUC. OK, so, just to explain this briefly, this is a score that says how good something is at making a diagnosis. That’s as far as I’m willing to explain that.

She talked about the different kinds of digital humans used for AI training, those being Virtual Avatars and Digital Twins aka Individual Models. These two examples are classified as “non-stochastic” meaning not random. The other two types were GAN or AI-Generated Population Models and Knowledge-Based Population Models, and these were stochastic types meaning they’re built using digital tools that utilize randomization.

OK, so having known all this, Andrea could then build the technical framework for her project, called “S-Synth: Knowledge-Based, Synthetic Generation of Skin Images” that’s also the title of the paper she co-authored and which I will link in the show notes, published in the MICCAI society journal: Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention. The technical framework consisted of 4 parts: first, Andrea would build a procedural skin model in Houdini, then one of her collaborators would help with placement and modeling of various skin lesions, Andrea would then render images with physics-based biologically accurate properties, taking into consideration different lighting conditions, ultimately creating a database of in silico images, and then 2 more of her collaborators would develop the machine learning aspect.  

I think I understood this, my apologies if I’m getting any of this wrong. 

Andrea shared a few screenshots from Houdini that were helpful to better understand what she was trying to do, which was an Automating Procedural Model Generation of human skin and its layers. As we all eventually run into in this field, when you’re pushing the boundaries of human knowledge you hit a point where there are no references, in this case, it was “Hypodermis Surface Noise”.

Sooo, Andrea had to use the dreaded “Artistic Interpretation”, but look, when it’s “evidence-informed” and “data-inspired” I feel like that’s something different, no? If you’re drawing each individual cell based on what you see and know, that’s artistic interpretation. When you’re writing code in Python to automate a procedural cellular scene, is that medical illustration interpretation? Can we flip this script? I think Andrea can.

Andrea then concluded with a close look, and I mean a really close look at everyone’s favorite 3D rendering effect “sub surface scattering”. Man, she got into the math guys. Deep. Deep into the math on sub surface and how we actually calculate how light is warped and adjusted by passing though skin layers. For this project she was using the Mitsuba 3 renderer, which I must be honest, I had never heard about! I guess it had capabilities that were specifically well-suited to the use case.

A question that Andrea had to ask herself here was “Are you improving the dataset or just increasing the data?” Currently, AI training results are so inaccurate, you are hurting the patient. This is bad medicine. Her findings from the study were not as impactful as she’d hoped, she described the results as “mid”, saying that the synthetic data–the 3D renderings she made–were most effective when the real data–photos from actual humans–is limited. When you have a large dataset of photos though, the synthetic data is less beneficial. I mean this kind of makes sense to me, at least the way my simple brain was interpreting it. Like, when you only have a limited set of images to work with, you’ll take anything that gives you some variation, but when you have tons and tons of images, mostly photos, the 3D renderings are going to stick out like a sore thumb and skew results. I think that’s what happened? 

O.M.G., what an impressive undertaking. Seriously. I mean how do you even come up with the suggestion to build an AI skin simulation model with Houdini and Python? You don’t. You don’t unless you're really smart. I’m not this smart but I have opened Houdini a few times and pretended I knew what I was doing, enough to appreciate what a crazy impressive technical feat this was–may I remind you, she pulled up the mathematical equations for sub surface scattering and was all like–ya, no big deal I just popped this in there. Uhh, ok. Hahaha, but thank you Andrea for taking on a project like this with real world application and presenting a summary of your work to the association. I was super impressed with your technical chops and your ability to make this dense material palatable for everyone, especially being the last talk of the day, and especially since you had to do this remotely after your flight got canceled. Talk about an all star! Proper respect. Mad props. The. Maddest. Of. Props!

Andrea Kim’s references:

• International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI) 2024

• Paper: https://papers.miccai.org/miccai-2024/paper/1426_paper.pdf

• Code: https://github.com/DIDSR/ssynth-release

• Demo: https://didsr.github.io/ssynth-release

• SideFX Houdini

• Alipour N, Burke T, Courtney J. Skin Type Diversity in Skin LesionDatasets: A Review. Curr Dermatol Rep. 2024;13(3):198-210. 

• Badano A, Lago M, Sizikova E, Delfino JG, Guan S, Anastasio MA, Sahiner B. The stochastic digital human is now enrolling for in silico imaging trials – Methods and tools for generating digital cohorts. arXiv:2301.08719. 2023.

• Daneshjou, R. et al. (2022). Disparities in dermatology AI performance on a diverse, curated clinical image set. Science Advances, 8(32), eabq6147.

• Jacques SL. Optical properties of biological tissues: a review. Physics in Medicine & Biology. 2013;58(11):R37-R61. 

• Kinyanjui, N.M. et al. (2020). Fairness of classifiers across skin tones in dermatology. MICCAI 2020. 

• Lyu T, Yang C, Zhang J, Guo S, Gao F, Gao F. Photoacoustic Digital Skin: Generation and Simulation of Human Skin Vascular for Quantitative Image Analysis. arXiv preprint arXiv:2011.04652. 2020. 

• Ma F. Static light screen space rendering of realistic skin appearance on human heads. McGill University (Canada). 2019. 

• Morales-Forero, A. et al. (2024). An insight into racial bias in dermoscopy repositories: A HAM10000 data set analysis. JEADV Clinical Practice. 

• Muralidharan, V. et al. (2024). A scoping review of reporting gaps in FDA-approved AI medical devices. npj Digital Medicine, 7(1), 273. 

• Salomatina E, Jiang B, Novak J, Yaroslavsky AN. Optical properties of normal and cancerous human skin in the visible and near-infrared spectral range. Journal of Biomedical Optics. 2006;11(6):064026.

• https://www.mitsuba-renderer.org

• Mitsuba 3 Documentation. Rough dielectric material (roughdielectric). Available at: https://mitsuba.readthedocs.io/en/latest/src/generated/plugins_bsdfs.html#rough-dielectric-material-roughdielectric

• Mitsuba 3 Documentation. Participating media. Available at: https://mitsuba.readthedocs.io/en/latest/src/generated/plugins_media.html#participating-media

FRIDAY, July 18th

Kicking off day 2 of the conference,

Anne Mondro shared Foraging the Heart: An Artist’s Search for Meaning

From the conference program:

How can the arts deepen empathy and personal discovery? Reflecting on these inquiries, Anne Mondro will discuss her two decades of experience as a studio artist and practitioner in arts and health. Anne will share her insights on how her creative projects bridge personal and public spaces to deepen our understanding of the human heart. Creating intricate woven sculptures, she will guide the audience through her use of visual metaphors that integrate anatomical imagery to illustrate the physical and emotional complexities of the body during times of illness and disease. She will elaborate on the connection between this aspect of her practice and her visual art programming designed for persons experiencing memory loss and their families. Presenting her research findings along with her personal observations, Anne will address how the arts can enhance relationships and foster opportunities for expression, exploration, and community involvement. Reflecting on her recent experiences with illness and disease, Anne will also share how her artwork has created a space for understanding grief and fear while building opportunities to connect to others.

Anne's story was a totally unique take on utilizing visual arts in healthcare. She isn’t JUST using art for a communication tool, which she is, she’s also using it as a bonafide treatment intervention. For over twenty years, Anne Mondro has been working as both a practicing studio artist and a pioneer in arts and health programming, working with patients experiencing dementia. Her path into therapeutic art began in 2005 at a University of Michigan mixer, where a conversation with a geriatrics worker who was also a poet opened her eyes to new possibilities. Soon after, she was developing art programming for the university's geriatrics department.

Anne sought advanced dementia care training because she believed in creating more than just activities – she wanted to design "enjoyable and safe projects" that would help participants "explore color and texture" while achieving "art of high merit."

Heartwarming examples demonstrated that people with dementia still deserve to experience pride and accomplishment in their creative work. Anne focused on goal setting and ensuring participants maintained agency in their involvement, with careful prep work that encouraged them to "focus on the joy of discovery and choices." Anne's approach was to meet people where they are. If someone had a lifelong interest in fashion, she'd work with silk scarves. For residents with gardening experience, she created large geometric garden projects that felt familiar and meaningful.

One of her most ambitious projects paired teenagers with older residents–the "Between Earth and Sky" Collaboration. They created lanterns together and worked on tactile geometric garden installations. The intergenerational connection brought unexpected joy and mutual learning.

Anne also realized that art could be a tool for developing caregiver skills like patience. She’s created some programs that help caregivers better understand their partner's needs, while retaining their own sense of identity. This can result in improved communication and stronger relationships.

When the pandemic hit, Anne adapted quickly, moving to virtual platforms and providing art kits so caregivers could practice ahead of time before leading sessions with their loved ones.

Throughout all of this work, Anne continued her own personal artistic practice, creating intricate wire crochet sculptures inspired by human anatomy. These "objects of wonder" aimed to capture "the essence of form" – bronchi, vessels, cells, and lymph nodes transformed into beautiful, contemplative art pieces. When she faced her own healthcare challenges, she found a new appreciation for patient education" and found herself creating art that explored fear and loneliness. Art became her pathway back to healing. Through collages, sculptures, and cyanotype prints (using ultraviolet light to create silhouettes), she processed her experience and gradually found her way back to wellness.

Anne's work reveals that the human need for creative expression doesn't diminish with age or illness – it transforms. Whether working with dementia patients, caregivers, or processing her own health journey, art provides a unique space for understanding, connection, and healing. Perhaps most importantly, Anne learned that "self-care requires practice." Anne Mondro's journey reminds us that profound art can emerge from the spaces where we connect with others or our own solitary practices, in both we must learn to value patience and honor vulnerability. 

This was a beautiful presentation–I loved seeing this different take on how art and health care can blend together to create direct positive impacts. Thank you so much Anne for presenting to  us at this year’s conference.

• University of Michigan Geriatrics Art Program

• MoMA's Dementia Programming

• Grand Rapids "SPARK" Program

Lydia Gregg: Bridging Technology and Education: The Role of 3D and Interactive Media in Healthcare

Johns Hopkins associate professor and director of operations Lydia Gregg, an absolute LEGEND in the field presented “A Graphic Narrative-Based Intervention for Opioid Use Disorder”. Lydia is mostly known for her detailed anatomical work done at Johns Hopkins, but also has a passion for graphic narratives. 

The official name of this project was the mTools4Life Study, with Study PI Dr. Oluwaseun Falade-Nwulia. The study objectives were to develop a peer recovery specialist-led intervention integrating narrative-based communication into a mobile app for opioid use disorder, or OUD, and evaluate the intervention for increases in post-hospitalization engagement in medications for OUD with pilot research.

Lydia provided some background on the Opioid Epidemic–there’s been a dramatic increase in all drug overdose deaths, most significantly since the covid-19 pandemic: over 100,000 taking place in 2023, and a corresponding rise in injection-related infections such as HIV. Man, that sucks. 

Treatment usually takes the form of medications like buprenorphine and methadone which block the effects of opioids, but uptake and retention and low so interventional resources are needed, hence this study. Key to its success were Peer Recovery Specialists who are individuals who have lived with OUD. They understand the situation personally and can offer effective strategies for behavior change.

One of those strategies being–the mTools4Life app. Available for Apple and Android smartphones it has contact information and a chat function, community resources and reminders and, 2 stories of recovery journeys in the graphic narrative format.

Lydia provides details in the talk about the formal study including the format of the interviews and how all this was used to directly inform the content in the graphic narratives. I thought it was interesting how participant’s reactions to illustration examples really drove the art style towards a more low fidelity approach, almost like something you’d see in a Zine–ya know those little indie comic booklets that are made from 8.5x11 sheets of paper folded into quarter size? Have you ever seen or made those? I remember we used to make those in HS. And you’d never print them in color always black and white–ya know, they were cheap. I guess that’s what was resonating with the target audience here.

Lydia used the feedback from interviews to mitigate unconscious biases and make sure the stories were relevant and understandable. She ended up with 2 fully developed narratives. They also made simple animations from each of these. She really wanted to make sure this process would be reproducible by someone else so she dug into the literature and made sure to use validated models and theories for the project framework. This is so awesome–this is where our profession really shines IMO. It’s not just making images, it's understanding the strategy and rationale behind why you design the images the way you do and how they serve the larger communication goal. So Lydia integrated behavioral change research with narrative design theories, this was so thorough, you should see some of these sheets filled out with input from the participants it’s a like a map of their thought process throughout the study it’s amazing. All these personal experiences and reflections were then used to formulate the personas in each of Lydia’s graphic narratives.

Props to Lydia for the Kurt Vonnegut reference during this discussion on narrative design btw. I love Kurt Vonnegut.

Lydia showed the UI of the mTools4Life app and walked us through some of the graphic narrative from one of the 2 storylines. You could see all the elements Lydia discussed being integrated but within a few panels you get pulled right into the story–it’s gritty and visceral. I really wanted to keep reading the story and find out what happened next.

Lydia also shared the results of the pilot study. There were a lot of challenges to enrolling participants which I could totally understand, a lot of these folks didn’t have smartphones. She gave some demographics on the study participants that were enrolled and gave us some breakdowns on the results of the study intervention. So the pilot study demonstrated successful development and deployment of the intervention–this was a great result. The Peer Recovery Specialists played a vital role in this success, and the graphic narratives were found to be the most recently used component of the app. 

A lot of great references were shared throughout this talk. I’ll be sure to include links in the show notes. Lydia brought up some alternative communication tools such as photo novellas and video testimonials and explained why the graphic narrative approach was chosen instead of these. I mean it’s similar to the same cases we make for medical illustration or animation versus photography or video–with illustrative techniques you can omit irrelevant details and direct the viewer’s focus. You also have the benefits of anonymity in a context like this. Study limitations were discussed such as the low sample size–I think this was a fantastic study given the constraints. She did mention the study has not been published just yet but sounds like it will be in the near future.

Wow, fantastic presentation and work Lydia. Thank you so much for this addition to the conference program. We really need more of these kinds of projects that take a serious societal problem and tackle it with a combination of thoughtful research, evidence-based communication strategies, and powerful art driven by human empathy. Again, fantastic work.

Bill Glass, Jer Weann Ang, (Paul Dye, & Dheeraj Varandani): Bridging Technology and Education: The Role of 3D and Interactive Media in Healthcare

I had the esteemed privilege to get to know Jer over the past year, we’ve chatted several times. She was kind enough to share a few words on the presentation:

This session will delve into the application of advanced interactive and 3D media to enhance healthcare professionals' education and patient care through experiential learning techniques at the Interprofessional Experiential Center for Enduring Learning (iEXCEL). Serving as a biomedical visualization resource at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), iEXCEL integrates innovative tools and platforms with creative solutions to transform healthcare training and communication. We will describe the use of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and interactive web-based applications across platforms such as head-mounted displays, stereoscopic 3D displays, and interactive multiaction walls available at the five-level, 192,000 square feet Davis Global Center which houses the iEXCEL program. The presentation will examine the unique benefits of these technologies in education and clinical training within a university hospital setting. Additionally, we will explore their implementation in patient and caregiver education. We will showcase specific use cases of our applications and briefly describe our process of working with the UNMC community in developing these projects. Attendees will have the opportunity to experience some of these technologies or applications firsthand during the Interactive Expo at the in-person meeting.

Bill and Jer took us on a guided tour of the iEXCEL group in Omaha, Nebraska –it felt like a virtual experience of walking through this impressive building that almost felt alive! In the Davis Global Center: each level had a dedicated purpose: The top floor, Level3 was outfitted for surgical training on cadavers, Level2 was the virtual lab,  Level1 the visualisation lab, ground floor was for global health security and the lower level for simulated community care.

Being from the Visualization Production team, Bill and Jer told us more about their roles within the facility. They mentioned a few specific projects, like the ZSpace: WonderVol application for stereoscopic interaction with any medical imaging set as a 3D visualization. They had some impressive On Site technologies like a massive 8K movie screen called an "infinity wall”–this thing was 2 stories tall, and it was totally within the building.That was wild to see.

Another project they shared was for an ENT surgeon, Dr Barbes, using Meta Quest VR headsets. Since neuro surgeons and ENT surgeons learn anatomy from different approaches and angles of dissection, they need unique learning tools to help simulate those kinds of experiences–a perfect use case for VR learning application. They showed an example of skull base anatomy inside a virtual space with an adjustable clipping plane feature and 3D labels that can stick to model. Another VR learning application was a Heart Lung Perfusion machine. 

Very cool stuff guys, thank you so much for presenting!

Next we had,

Gyyoung Oh: Solo, Not Stagnant: Strategies for Independent Medical Illustrators

From the conference program:

Medical illustrators working in environments surrounded by content experts such as hospitals, research labs, or academic institutions have access to incredible resources but can face challenges as the sole medical illustrator on their team. For recent graduates, this adjustment can be particularly daunting, as they transition from a structured curriculum with clear deadlines to navigating a professional environment independently.

This session will discuss the hurdles faced by "solo" illustrators and share ways to thrive professionally while staying up-to-date with the rapidly evolving technologies shaping our field, along with exploring strategies to propose and integrate tools that advance department capabilities in order to build on the skills gained during school.

Gyyoung graduated from the Hopkins class of 2023 and currently works at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. So a fairly recent grad which she acknowledged right away in her intro but also pointed out it’s this fresh perspective on the field she’s bringing. She wanted to help recent grads adapt from academia into professional roles, propose tools and workflows, share techniques for effective collaboration with content experts, and build and maintain professional relationships within the field.

Gyyoung’s first point about transitioning from school to a solo position is one I’ve made many times and could not agree with more which is: prioritizing personal skill development. This might mean you need to advocate for the tools you need. The other people in your department probably don’t know what you need and why–so you need to tell them. You need to make the case for how it benefits them, not just you and find the right people to make this case to. Show them what’s possible so they ask for it. Help the people you work with and for, see past established standards and raise those standards with you. In the words of Del the Funky Homosapien: “Upgrade your grey matter, cause one day, it may matter.”

Another point Gyyoung made here which I will also agree with strongly is taking control over project schedules and being strategic in your deadlines. The same way you need to include overhead costs in your pricing estimates, you also should include time overhead in your strategic timelines. Ya know, give yourself some wiggle room to push the rendering phase more. Gyyoung mentioned it here and this isn’t emphasized enough I think–the better the work you put out there the more eyeballs it’s going to catch. That’s the purpose of why we do this. So it’s in everyone’s benefit not to rush things when you can avoid that.

Effective collaboration does come from aligning your skills with the goals of your clients and content experts, but the cornerstone of effective collaboration is getting effective feedback. So what does that look like? Well, you don’t want vague, glib responses like “looks good”. You want specifics. To get specific answers you need to ask specific questions. These questions are going to sound different when discussing with colleagues versus content experts, but by asking specific questions tailored to the person you’re speaking to, you are going to get more actionable feedback. Reiterating from earlier the point about understanding the goals of your clients and content experts, the more you understand where and how they will use the visual assets you’re building for them will help you steer those assets towards achieving the communication goals for those visualizations. 

When it comes to building & maintaining professional relationships, it’s actually really easy to get started with this, just keep in touch with your classmates, colleagues, people you’ve worked with and for, people you’ve met. Check out the online activity on the AMI HUB, the medical illustration subreddit and the medical and scientific art Discords. Be willing to share and don’t be shy to ask for help. 

Gyyoung wrapped up with some tips on sustainable growth which doubled as tips on attending to one’s mental health I’d say, such as going easy on yourself and having faith in the process, remembering that growth and improvement take time. Reflect on your past successes and use each new project to focus on one specific area of skill development, don’t try to do it all on every single project and stress yourself out. Great talk Gyyoung, thank you so much for putting this together. 

Annie Gough: Vicarious Trauma and Resiliency

So this actually segues perfectly into the next talk, where Medical Legal illustrator and author Annie Gough presented on a special flavour of burnout. This is a topic she’s been taking a deep dive on recently–in fact I sat down with Annie and we recorded a whole podcast on it so keep an ear out for that. I’ll also include a link in the show notes to our previous interview on the LearnMedical.Art podcast. Vicarious Trauma is something that affects everyone in the field, not just med legal, though perhaps this is where it’s most prevalent. 

Here’s Annie with an overview of the talk:...

I’m going to add a bit from the conference program, quote: 

Vicarious Trauma is the pain we personally experience through researching, reviewing, brainstorming, and illustrating other's trauma, injuries, and damages. After years and years of catastrophic case work, med-legal illustrators take in the trauma, they know it, they feel it and they can become scared of experiencing it themselves. This is a normal reaction to traumatic stress. In fact there are lots of common reactions to vicarious trauma that one might not expect.

In the medical/healthcare/hospice world, first responders to the scene, EMTs, police, ER nurses, social workers, etc are offered resiliency training and grief counseling for the traumas they witness to help heal so they can continue to serve victims and injured patients. I believe the legal industry is full of professionals that experience vicarious trauma; we can call them second responders. Medical-legal illustrators work side by side with attorneys and experts to bring a traumatic scene back to life, to revisit the trauma, locate specific injuries, and recreate them. We do this to serve victims, to bring them justice, to make the world a safer place for everyone. We too need to know about the vicarious trauma we bring home and how to heal it so we can continue to serve.

I want to take the opportunity here to add a reflection of my own because in many presentations from artists, illustrators, designers, developers, we touch on this idea of mitigating the risk of burnout. That term gets thrown around a lot, but to be honest, I don’t think I ever had a good clear definition on what exactly “burnout” is or means.

There was a recent episode of another podcast I enjoy very much “The Strenuous Life Podcast” with Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt and professional firefighter Stephan Kesting, super interesting guy, and he recently was interviewing sports Psychologist Dr. Haley Perlis on the topic of “Overcoming Doubt and Anxiety in Competition” this was in the realm of professional athletes but some of the ideas I think apply very much to our field in particular the helpful definitions and distinctions between “overtraining” and “burnout”. 

Dr. Perlis explained the difference being that overtraining is physical exhaustion with emotional and mental tiredness, BUT, you are still motivated and committed, whereas burnout is exhaustion, you may or may not be physically exhausted but there is with also a loss of passion, feeling overwhelmed, and perhaps most critically, low perceived performance. You don’t feel you are good enough anymore and this often leads to thoughts of quitting. THAT is burnout. I think this is really important to clearly define so we can recognize it in ourselves when it comes up. 

I will share a link to this interview in the show notes and, a golden nugget of wisdom from Dr. Perlis on how to treat burnout and recover, which is variety. You need to get out of the same headspace and do something else. I’m seriously considering doing a whole episode on just this topic alone, but for now I’ll just share this one piece of advice: get into a different headspace, get some fresh mental air. So hey, maybe this is one reason why I find the AMI conferences and engaging with other medical illustrators so heart-warming. It’s a way to get a mental break from your own tangled web of frustrations and hear about someone else’s! Hahaha. No I’m kidding, social contact is healthy though! You get perspective and you get to feel not so alone.

In our second interview together, Annie zeroes in on how the specific stress of being exposed to traumatic life events affects us as medical illustrators, as the people tasked with sharing these stories. She talks a lot about how to recognize, manage, and process these vicarious traumas. So stay tuned for that episode, you won’t want to miss it!

Mica Duran: The Why and How of Copyright: The legal rights to monetize your works

Next we had an important business talk on “The Why and How of Copyright: The legal rights to monetize your work” by Mica Duran.

From the conference website:

Copyright is the legal protection of your creative works and the income they produce. To enjoy the full legal protection afforded to copyright holders (including the right to collect statutory damages for violations), registration of your copyrights is required in the United States, for US Citizens and non-citizens who publish in the US market.

In this session, artists will receive an easy-to-understand explanation of WHY/WHEN/HOW they should register. This skill applies to all professional artists, whether you are independent artist or within an institutional group. A variety of common copyright registration types will be highlighted, including but not limited to: individual, group/collection, derivative, animation, copyright buyout (transfer of copyright), and registering pseudonymously. Step-by-step instructions will be demonstrated, along with how to embed metadata to further medical illustrators’ efforts to protect their work.

AMI resources on these topics will be provided in addition to where publicly available resources can be located. There will be a Q&A opportunity at the end of the speaker’s allotted time.

I have to give credit to Mica here–she has been ON TOP of the litigations on and around AI. She posts regularly on the AMI HUB, sharing with members articles and resources on what’s been happening in the courts. There are a few AMI members who have taken it upon themselves to keep the community updated with major legal proceedings that affect how we do business in the future. Or don’t! So a big thanks to Mica for this talk and for all her efforts.

The main thrust of this talk was to convince listeners of WHY they should register copyright on their work. In the US, copyright grants a creator a bundle of 5 exclusive rights: the right to reproduce the work by making copies, distribute the work by selling or providing copies to the public, create derivative works, display the work in public, and perform the work in public. Keeping this in mind, you should write the Terms of your legal contracts with Clients to address how each of these rights will be handled in your agreement, and, charge accordingly. This then goes into licensing terms–you grant certain limited rights through licensing. Bearing in mind that future technologies will generate new ways in which work can be used, getting as specific as possible in the language in your contracts can save you major headaches down the road.

Registering copyright establishes a public record and starts a paper trail if you should ever have to defend the ownership of your work. Important to know is that this is a necessary prerequisite to taking someone to court, so you need to be on top of registering copyright, but the benefits can be huge if someone infringes your copyright and you sue–you can be rewarded a hefty amount in damages, even if the case goes to settlement. Depending on how grievous the offence is, statutory damages can get into the 10s of thousands of dollars, up to 150,000 for a willful infringement. 

Mica went on to discuss the importance of timely registration, the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), “work for hire” contracts, derivative works, how to determine date of publication, and took us step by step into the registration process on the US Copyright office website. She even explained some differences between still media like images and motion media such as video, and wrapped up with lots of tips on record keeping. 

I think at some point in the future I’ll need to put an episode out there on business related themes and copyright will certainly have to be a part of that. I know it works differently in different countries–it certainly does here in Canada, where I live–but this is a cornerstone of doing business in this field and even if you don’t live in the US, wherever you reside there are going to be some laws regarding ownership, authorship, patents, intellectual property, and knowing a little of how it works some place else can help guide your search for local regulations. Getting a guided tour on business administration tasks like how to copyright your work is what the AMI meeting is definitely meant to help provide the membership, so again, thank you Mica for taking this on.

Running concurrently was 

Dr Gökhan Canaz : Neurosurgical Perspective on Illustrations

“This presentation will explore the art and science of neurosurgical illustrations through the lens of a seasoned neurosurgeon. Emphasizing the critical importance of accurate reference usage, precise neuroanatomical orientation, and meticulous surgical approach illustrations, Gökhan will provide valuable insights and practical strategies for enhancing project outcomes in this specialized field. Additionally, the session will offer nuanced advice on effectively collaborating with professionals in the surgical community, fostering better communication and understanding.”

I caught the second half of this presentation and what I saw really impressed me. I’ve been noticing a strong uptick in the production of medical illustration work out of Turkey in the past decade or so and they are really good. Especially in surgical illustration, no doubt the influence of Dr. Levent Efe for sure. Dr Efe is an ardent supporter of the AMI and an MD, and a fantastic medical and surgical illustrator. 

Dr. Canaz’s talk took us deep into neurosurgery. He shared several examples of his work and discussed some of the inaccuracies he’s seen and tried to rectify. He became a neurosurgeon in 2018. and in the same year founded Cura Canaz Medical Arts with his colleague Caglar and started to work professionally.  In January 2024, he moved to Germany, left neurosurgery and continues to work as a medical illustrator.

I had to scan through his company site, CCmedical Arts to get a closer look at the neuroanatomy images he presented in his talk. I’ll be sure to include that link in the show notes so you can see his illustrations describing the Herophilus-Galen line as a predictor of extent of resection in the occipital interhemispheric transtentorial approach to pineal tumors in children–and yes that is also an article title–suboccipital transtentorial approach to the pineal region, Optic glioma, excision zone and the position of knee of von Willebrand for the textbook "Principles of Neuro-Oncology". He’s got 2 publications in World Neurosurgery: An illustrative review of Internal Carotid Artery Classification by Dr. Jhon E. Bocanegra Becerra, and, Anatomical Parcellation based on Superior Cerebellar Peduncle Projection. Wow! Absolutely breath-taking work. Big thanks to Dr. Canaz for presenting in this way too, showing how he’s always trying to correct inaccuracies he’s observed and show neuroanatomy as accurately as possible.

Thank you so much for this presentation Dr. Canaz, I would strongly encourage you to post a video recording of yourself giving this talk on YouTube, Vimeo, or social media–I think this would be highly-viewed content.

AWARDS CEREMONY 

Day one wrapped up with the annual AWARDS CEREMONY. Yea they were right on it–those Salon pieces had already been reviewed and ranked. The judges must have shown up early! 

President Nobles Green opened the awards ceremony with a few words thanking everyone for their submissions – reminding us that these achievements inspire and remind the community of why we are here. Both why we gather, and why we do what we do. 

I’ll provide a link in the show notes to the conference Salon gallery, where all the award recipients are marked. 

The awards started off with the VT (or Vesalius Trust, yes that Vesailius Trust I had just mentioned before, same one) Student  Awards! Congrats to Alan Cole award recipient Noah Smith, Talia Mastalski for receiving the Joyce McGill award, and McKenzie Dulmes for her Steve Harrison award. 

Props of course to all the VT Scholars. I’ll put a link in the show notes for the Vesalius Trust so you can learn more about that. Noah Smith also took home the Inez Demonet award. Look at this guy! Way to go, Noah.

I do want to call attention to a few awards specifically. Former podcast guest Sam Bond presented the Literary award from the Journal of Biocommunication to Ni-ka Ford, for her work on the article "From Netter's Naturalism to a Representation Revolution”, alongside co-authors Dr. Phillip Boiselle, Dr. Francois Luks, and Ian Suk. 

This was just so awesome to see Ni-ka Ford recognized like this–talk about someone who really deserves that. Ni-ka has been a truly inspirational force in the industry over the past several years. It was so satisfying to see her skill and dedication recognized. Congratulations Ni-ka!

Next up were the Professional Awards, Student Awards, AMI Fellows. The Outstanding Service Awards were given by Nobles and Jeff Day to Mica Duran and Lori Messenger. The 2025 AMI Lifetime Achievement Award went to Anne R. Altemus, and the 2025 AMI Brödel Award for Excellence in Education was awarded to Kip Carter. 

Congratulations to all those who received awards at this year’s conference! 

Tech Showcase

This year’s tech showcase did not disappoint. I tried my best to scope out every single one of these as the tech demos are always one of my favorite parts of the conference.

Rachel Bajema and Heidi Schehlein presented Free research resources including the Human Reference Atlas. They explored and discussed several free online resources that can be used in projects copyright free, with a strong focus on the Human Reference Atlas and shared some case studies on how these resources can be used to help workflows.

Kevin Edwards and Grant Pfizenmaier from Mayo Clinic presented “Medical education in the Virtual Reality space”, giving an overview of their production process and main tools they use for VR, which included GravitySketch and ShapesXR. GravitySketch is a powerful tool for modeling and visualizing assets and allows for client feedback in an immersive space, though it is limited in its ability to test interactions. ShapesXR they described as "PowerPoint" for VR. This allows for  playable experiences and integration with other applications.

We had two different “Open Mic” style tech showcase rooms. I liked this format, it was basically an open invite for anyone to come up and share some cool tricks and techniques they use.

There was an After Effects Open Mic hosted by Emi Frohn and Caitlin Morris. There’s a recording from this demo on the AMI HUB so if you’re a member you can log in and check that out. Emi and Caitlin had some great workflow tips such as frequently used hotkeys, AE layer styles, using guide layers, 3D layers, tracking data from C4D, timeline markers, and lots more. When I poked my head in on this discussion, Abeeshan from Red Nucleus was demoing the parent comps and style instancing of the Essential Graphics features in AE. We’ve used this a bit at TVASurg and it’s a really powerful system that works in both AE and Premiere Pro. So really cool to see the open mic aspect of this talk.

At the Photoshop & Illustrator Open Mic hosted by Sarah Faris, I learned some new tricks, such as: 

• Applying appearance effects to an Illustrator layer or group as opposed to just a single object 

• Similarly, you can also apply layer effects to PS groups 

• Using solid color layers with a clipping mask

Always something more to learn with our bread and butter tools in the industry! During the open mic portion, Thomas Nowacki from the Cleveland program showed a cool trick in Illustrator which was to make 2 objects with 2 colors for your palette and use a Shape Blend to build all the other swatches of the color palette. That was really cool. 

Augusta professor Joe Samson presented “Cozying up to ComfyUI” I’ve played around a little with Stable Diffusion and I’ve seen a lot of people mention they used ComfyUI but to be honest I haven’t explored it myself so it was great to get a demo from Joe on this. ComfyUI is a modular, node-based interface for Stable Diffusion that integrates with 3D software like Cinema 4D (C4D), Blender, and Maya to enhance animations. Joe showed how you can import a rendered image sequence and use ComfyUI’s features to add textures and effects–almost like instagram filters but for video. These were integrated fairly well. Joe touched on several considerations for AI animation including some insights I wasn’t aware of. For example, ControlNet is not just rigs but can be used with depth and silhouettes as well. Joe also shared some limitations such as using subscription APIs with ComfyUI means you’re working outside your local computer environment, so keep note of that. I know AI is not a favorable topic for many, but a lot of people I talk to will concede that they’re more willing to use it for augmentation rather than generation, and I think that’s what Joe was after in this demo.

And lastly Ryan Ehredt, Medical Virtual Reality Developer at Barrow Neurological Institute, presented a cool piece of tech I hadn’t encountered before: Tilt Five! An augmented reality (AR) system. This was interesting; it was a set of goggles and controllers that worked in synchrony with a reflective sheet that folded out and could be laid flat on a table. You could then see hologram-like projections over this surface through the goggles. Really cool tech Ryan, thanks so much for getting this set up and sharing what you’ve been working on!

STUDENT SHOWCASE

I did take a cruise through the student showcase, which had about 20-ish recent grads showing their portfolios and student projects. So much talent on display. Now I wasn’t able to find a list but I did find that the Vesalius Trust had posted each student on LinkedIn so that’s where I was able to compile this list. I apologize exceedingly if I miss anyone but if I did I’m going to blame LinkedIn. Despite the risk of faux pas, I am going to share the list of student names because I think the whole point of the showcase was to help get these guys names out there! So I want to help give them all a little boost too. Here’s a list of the presenters, and where they are based:

• Bonnie Wang, LI, BMC, Toronto

• Sophia Chen, LI, RIT grad, 

• Carolyn Chen, ©, LI, Hopkins grad, out of North Carolina

• Alexandria Dannhardt, LI, Baltimore

• Emily Huang, LI, BMC, Toronto

• Hannah Forward, LI, Dallas Texas  

• Talia Mastalski, LI, College Park, Maryland

• Avery Fleishman, LI, Tampa Bay SE

• Stephanie Wang, LI, BMC, Toronto,

• Chelsea Crile, LI, Chicago

• Noah Smith, LI, Hoschton Georgia SE

• Bryona Hamilton, LI, RIT grad, Colorado W

• Katie Kirkpatrick LI, Boston NE

• Hayley D’Alessandro, © LI, Chicago JAMA intern MW

• Alex Dimeff, LI, 3D, Dallas, Texas

• Abigail Rumpp, LI, Baltimore NE

• Landon Dyer, LI, Augusta, GA SE

• Anna Getzinger, ©, LI, forensic specialist, Owosso, Michigan, United States

• Jeah Aurora Kim, © BMC, LI

• Molly Wells, BMC, LI, (TVASurg PatEd), Powell River, British Columbia, Canada

• Harmony Wong, LI, RIT grad

• Jillian Derjue, © LI **2 2D illustrations (spot gloss & surgical instruments)

• Lauren Jones, © LI, BMC, Toronto

• Yu Wen Jan, © BMC, LI,  TVASurg PatEd, Toronto

This may sound strange but I really enjoyed compiling this list and looking over all their work again to be honest because it’s like a snapshot in time of what the future of medical illustration looks like, it’s a window into the work done in the educational programs, what current tools and techniques are being utilized, and some cutting edge science to boot. I wish the best to all these recent grads. 

Gary Lees Memorial 

I was saddened when I heard the news earlier this year of the passing of Gary Lees, former director of the Johns Hopkins program from 1983 to 2017. A special memorial was held for Gary at this year’s conference. Memorial Presenters included Cory Sandone, Lydia Gregg, Anne Altemus, Gary Schnitz, Jeni Fairman, Zina Deretsky, Fabian de Kok-Mercado, Andrew Swift, and Graham Johnson.

Gary earned his Masters in medical illustration from the University of Michigan program and joined Hopkins as an illustrator in 1970. 13 years later he was head of the department. Gary contributed illustrations to more than 100 publications and taught more than 225 graduate students over the course of his career.

I learned some really fascinating facts about Gary from the memorial the Hopkins program was kind enough to share on Vimeo. His interest in education began when he was still in high school, that’s amazing, while just a senior in high school he was involved with curriculum design, according to Lydia Gregg. In 1966-67 he was a mentee of the legend Herb Smith, the same Herb Smith who pitched the idea of CMI certification mentioned in Mandy and Christina’s presentation later. He also studied under Gerry Hodge, another legend in pen and ink illustration.

Gary was recruited to Hopkins by Denise Crosby, who was then director of the Art as Applied to Medicine program in 1970. He touched the lives of many students and academic colleagues during this time there, and contributed greatly to the program’s evolution for over 3 decades, as well as being an active member of the AMI throughout his career. 

Now, not everyone might know this, but through your connection with the AMI you can potentially get some added letters behind your name, there are two credentials closely associated with AMI membership: CMI or Certified Medical Illustrator, discussed in more length later in this episode, and FAMI, or Fellow of the Association of Medical Illustrators. Gary contributed towards making both of these come into being.

There was a really great photo of Gary that Anne Altemus shared of Gary in his cluttered office but you could still see fragments of order like the neatly arranged row of white binders representing many years worth of AMI meeting minutes. What a unique window into the mind and life of the man.

I was moved by this quote from Jeni Fairman: “The mark of a true mentor is not the spotlight that they stand in, but the light they pass on to others.” I am totally going to put a link in the show notes to Midnight Blue by Kenny Burrell, a song that Fabian referenced in his words–man, that is a cool way to honour someone’s memory–hey, here’s a sensory homage to Gary’s energy. I’ve been listening to that while working on this very podcast Fabian, so thanks for that.

Many kind words and fun memories were shared by all the speakers. This was so moving. Thank you all for your contributions. The Johns Hopkins Department of Art as Applied to Medicine created a webpage to honour Gary that I will share in the show notes. Rest in peace, Gary.

Carol Donner Memorial 

It is also my duty to report on the passing of another giant in the world of medical illustration, CAROL DONNER who passed away on July 25th, 2025. This happened right after the AMI conference wrapped up, so it wasn’t officially a part of the conference program, but since it happened so recently and because I know Carol was an absolute legend in the field, I wanted to include just a few words about her as well at this point.

Bill Westwood was kind enough to share a few of her career highlights on the AMI HUB and will be releasing a more thorough memorandum in the near future.

Paraphrasing from Bill’s bio on Carol: Carol was an Ohio State graduate in the mid 1960s, then moved to NYC where she worked for medical publishers, television producers, film makers, medical magazines, advertising agencies and pharmaceutical companies.

She was very active in the AMI and won many awards, and to quote Bill: “Her pen & ink anatomical and surgical illustrations were extraordinary in their creativity and technical beauty.” 

Former podcast guest Anthony Baker noted that Carol carried the torch of illustrating Zollinger Atlas of Surgical Illustrations from Mildred Codding, who herself had been a student of Max Brödel. Strong lineage.

Tonya Hines shared that while famous for her surgical illustrations in the Zollinger Atlas, she was also a neuroanatomy expert and illustrated a children's book called “The Magic Anatomy Book.” If you can find a copy of that, be sure to hold on to it–it’s rare!

Chris Gralapp shared that Carol was the primary illustrator for Scientific American for many years, in the 1980's fought valiantly for artists' rights, and was AMI President in 1992.

Thanks everyone for sharing your memories of Carol, and we look forward to Bill’s memoriam in an upcoming AMI Newsletter.

SATURDAY, July 19th

Day 3 of AMI 2025, and…

Stephanie Drawdy - Artists Rights

Kicking off the final day was Artists Rights attorney and fellow podcaster Stephanie Drawdy presenting “Visual Artists’ Rights in the ‘Intelligence’ Age”.

From the conference program:

“Artists have historically faced a multitude of threats to their rights. The increasing cross-border nature of shared data and expanding growth of technology is only exacerbating these threats. How can artists, and visual artists specifically, be adequately protected in this ‘Intelligence’ Age?

To protect their concerns, visual artists should know how laws and policies are developing that have a bearing on their practice. This presentation offers an overview of these developments through: (i) examination of representative case holdings, legislation and policy that address the intersection of technology and artists’ economic and moral rights; (ii) assessment of inconsistent legal positions related to technology that are surfacing between and within jurisdictions; and (iii) analysis of perspectives from the creative sector on which aspects of emerging technologies are or may be most helpful or harmful and how the three Cs of consent, credit and compensation are valued.

So this was very much focused on AI and the legal aspects surrounding use of AI in medical illustration. If you haven’t already I’ll recommend you check out the podcast I did on the AAA conference that was held in Toronto about a year ago. Michael Hickman gave a talk there on AI tools and there were several other presentations that touched on it as well.

Stephanie began this talk sharing her own personal experience with art theft–this being a literal theft of one of her paintings–man, that sucks. When she first heard about AI, it was often described as theft, so she totally empathizes with that feeling.

She talked about her own experience using the “Have I been trained dot com” site and finding her work there. I’m sure we’ve all probably searched ourselves on this site, but unfortunately there’s no going back, if you’re there, well, you’re already included in the released dataset

Stephanie touched on the lack of online protection and emphasized that many artists depend on online marketing. Putting your work online is pretty much mandatory to be seen and attract business. 

In that talk Michael did mention Adobe Firefly and it’s sales pitch on being ethically trained, some of us who are interested in using AI image generation tools may try to use ethical models to do so, but at the end of the day, Stephanie points out, you only know what you’ve been told about how ethical that training set was, and as we’ve all heard at this point, once it’s in there, it’s in there. It’s not going to be useful to use time and resources to undo what’s already been done. At this point, output is the real issue we need to focus on.

In between input and output is a set of rights. Specifically, we’re talking about 17 US Code Section 106’s bundle of exclusive rights. This comes from the US Copyright Act of 1976, which specifies copyright protection is for, quote “original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device” and that’s where it starts to get a little murky. Is that where it starts to get murky? I think it gets murky from all kinds of directions as we’ll soon see.

You’ve got “work for hire” contracts, this is a provision in that 1976 Copyright Act where an employer, customer or client becomes considered the author of a work unless, quote, “parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them…” right, again, so in a contract. Stephanie makes the point here that copyright is meant to protect the public first, and author second. Which seems weird, but it’s basically like, we are putting together this rulebook on ownership to encourage people to make things and profit from the things they make to encourage other people to also make things so that even more people benefit from those things you make. 

Then you have “Fair Use” Man, this really grinds my gears, talk about the most abused doctrine ever. This is so frequently used as defense when people steal work and try to justify it, kinda makes me hate it, but in its original form, it was supposed to make things, well, fair. Fair Use, aka 17 US Code 107, is composed of 4 factors, 1&4 have been most relevant to us medical illustrators, but especially factor 4, the market effect. Those 4 factors are: One, purpose and character of the use. Is it commercial, transformative, etc. Factor two, the nature of the copyrighted work, factor three, amount and substantiality used, and factor four,  the effect of the use, potential market, or value of the work.

In 1990 we saw an update. The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, or 17 US Code 106A: Rights of Attribution & Integrity, and 106B Collection of resale royalty for visual art. So a defense boost for moral rights for visual artists. 

The DMCA or Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998 added another stick to the bundle. This was an update to try and keep pace with the internet information age we now found ourselves in. Of course, there are currently some appeals on this.

This now brings us to the US Copyright Office’s AI Policy, which is taking shape as I speak. Stephanie shared the current USCO Policy and decisions related to generative AI, some prominent lawsuits filed against the USCO for copyright denials to visual outputs, and the USCO’s request for comments, AI report and legislative recommendations. 

A few notes I took from this section of the talk were that human authorship is considered sacrosanct–this is the gold standard. They don’t currently protect style but have recently considered it–seems like so far it’s still a “no” but they did issue in a report that they will remain open to revisiting their conclusions. They put out a Request for Comment at one point–I do remember this and even filled out the form but man that was dense, it reminded me of the process of trying to opt out of AI use from Meta, but like, way more intense. This did generate over 10k comments so it’s something a lot of people were willing to slog through to make their point. 

Two famous cases where human authorship was deemed mandatory for copyright were Dr. Thaler “Recent Entrance to Paradise” and Jason Allen for “Space Opera Theatre”. During one of these cases the plaintiff referred to the Oscar Wilde case where photography could be copyrighted under the notion that artist intervention took place in the design and composition of the photo. The argument then goes, well if someone puts in the effort for an arrangement to be photographed, with an ai output with over 600 iterations, what’s the difference? Well, the courts have decided the difference is the lack of human involvement. In both these cases it was determined by the court that there was no human involvement in the creation of the work so copyright was not granted.

Stephanie next went into some international court decisions, and it’s really interesting how this works, because even if you don’t live in this country halfway around the world that made a certain decision, when an issue comes up in your home country that they have no prior examples of to base the decision on, they may look at what other courts in other countries have said and that provides at least some idea of how others have viewed the situation. As an example of this, Stephanie mentioned a “Sui generis” court decision in Ukraine, this is not a full-fledged right but it at least addresses some pain points. This is really interesting how we’re paying attention to legal rulings in other countries here—it really shows how unprecedented all of this is. 

The overview of the current precedent as it stands though, is the DMCA’s protection of copyright management information is recognized as within the bundle of artists rights. Market harm may tip the scales even it GAI is transformative, and copyright holders’ protection will be strengthened if “identicality” is not required under DMCA. 

A lot of heavy legalese and developments to sort through but Stephanie was kind enough to share this slide deck on the AMI HUB, so if you find yourself burning to know what the legal landscape is looking like these days on generative AI, definitely check that out or give a listen to Stephanie’s podcast, the Warfare of Art and Law Podcast. She’s definitely an expert on this topic!

Sarah Gluschitz: Challenging Conventional Medical Illustrations of the Menstrual Cycle

Sarah Gluschitz, Senior Academic Medical Illustrator at St. George’s University in Grenada took the podium next to present “Challenging Conventional Medical Illustrations of the Menstrual Cycle: Utilising a systematic review and thematic analysis to examine the linear and circular model”

This work was a collaboration with their sister, Anamaria Gluschitz–Head Midwife of the obstetrics unit at the Asklepios Klinik in Hamberg, and lecturer in midwifery studies at Hamberg university of applied sciences – and Dr. Robert Hage–Professor at St. George, Sarah’s mentor and an avid researcher. 

Sarah wanted to challenge conventional illustrations of the menstrual cycle. While reviewing visual content for ObGyn lecture slides, Sarah noted the conventional linear model of the menstrual cycle on one slide contrasted with a cyclical depiction on another. Seeing the information about hormonal, endometrial, and follicular changes and anatomical structures spread across 2 slides, they asked: why not combine all of this into 1 medical illustration? 

When searching reference images, the proliferation of variations on these 2 initial images (which themselves were likely rip-offs from Frank Netter illustrations) became apparent. Several days of searching physical books, online resources like Google images, and 300 PubMed search results, did not yield a single image with a cyclical depiction of endometrial changes. 

The approach went heavily into research–and this was the main thrust of the talk–demonstrating a thorough and exhaustive search for existing images and depictions of the menstrual cycle. The PRISMA method was utilized and described here. This is graduate and doctoral level academia here that helps with reporting and checking systematic reviews. It’s like creating a digitized paper trail–an categorized inventory on where references and source material comes from. Here they were also comparing what scientists and medical students have access to vs what the public have access to.

So they searched 3 databases (PubMed, Clinical Key Student Database, and Google images), and using the explicit and specific search term “menstrual cycle”, they identified sources, screened them and filtered which to include in their pool of image references. 

The result was 96 images to use for a thematic analysis (from an initial 47,00 search results). Sarah notes some stark differences in the types of images from each database: the PubMed papers had lots of graphs, the Clinical Student Key had more linear depictions and the Google images were more cyclical depictions. 

A lot of details were shared on how they broke down these images further into 6 main categories, with several sub categories for a total of 12, but these made a lot of sense when displayed alongside one another. This was really the point of doing this, by creating these categories of image styles you could more readily identify where the gaps were in visualization strategies. 

One rudimentary image caught the attention of the research team–I’ll provide a link in the show notes to the Robbins and Cotran Atlas of Pathology, 4th edition (https://www.clinicalkey.com/#!/browse/book/3-s2.0-C20170006158) where this image was found. It was the only cyclical depiction they found of endometrial development, still lacking in certain details they wanted to include, but it was vindicating nonetheless to see someone else found value in this type of depiction.

Sarah shared a few examples of the sketching stages and the final illustration that brought home all this meticulous research–it really made an impact to see the final piece in context of all the work that went into making it. They even went to the trouble of making a comparable image in a linear style for a proper evaluation comparison. Even though that’s what they wanted to challenge they still made the image in that style to make a fair control subject–now that’s a dedication to science. Last point that was made here, if you’re ever asked to make an illustration about the menstrual cycle hey, include blood! That’s what we’re talking about here after all, so don’t be scared. Everything’s going to be OK.

This study demonstrated an active questioning of widely accepted formats in scientific imagery, how a deep and thorough systematic review of available references can be used to identify gaps in our collective knowledge base, and an analysis on why these gaps in understanding may have occurred, based on target audiences for different depiction styles. 

I applaud Sarah and all collaborators for taking on this project–this was not only a fantastic illustration informed by research but also a powerful roadmap on how such a visualization project can be replicated elsewhere. I left this talk with a new appreciation for how researching visual references with a systematic methodology can impact my own work in the future. 100%. Fantastic work Sarah thank you for bringing this value to the AMI conference program.

Photo with the prez! From left to right: AMI 2025 Presenter Sarah Gluschitz, AMI President Nobles Green, and ardent Medical Illustration fan Paul Kelly.

Mandy Root-Thompson & Christina Pecora

Navigating the CMI Exam: Certification Exam Prep, Insights, and Opportunities for Engagement

At this year’s conference we had a special presentation on the BCMI, or Board of Certification of Medical Illustrators by Board Chair Mandy Root Thompson and Portfolio Chair Christina Pecora. 

In their own words: …

So a few updates to start: the BCMI, or Board of Certification for Medical Illustrators, has a new independent site, a Handbook resource guide, as well as searchable client-facing database. That’s really great, I think that helps a lot to differentiate the BCMI from the AMI. When I interviewed Shelley Wall for the BMC 80th anniversary–Shelley mentioned how the BCMI must be an independent entity to grant certifications, so the move to have an independent website helps solidify this messaging. The BCMI and AMI are completely independent entities. The CMI–Certified Medical Illustrator–exam was also very recently updated. It’s updated every 10 years and the newest exam was launched in May of this year, 2025.

Mandy and Christina gave a brief HISTORY of the BCMI. These are some important milestones in the history of the profession which are also quite recent in the grand scheme of things. Many people, even the lay public, are aware of the drawing done by Leonardo da Vinci and the field of medical art traces its roots back even prior to Da Vinci, but we’ve really only come together as an organized workforce in the past 50 years or so and the history of the CMI really demonstrates this fact.

In 1976 the idea of a CMI came from the legend Herb Smith. Mandy explained that in order for the AMI to get the type of non-profit designation it wanted, they could no longer require a portfolio submission for membership, so the idea for a certification that would have a portfolio requirement and written test was pitched by Herb.

It took a little time to gain traction but in 1987 the AMI officially supported this initiative and in 1990 the first inaugural exam was held, with the first batch of CMIs being designated in 1993.

In addition to the roles Mandy and Christina fulfill, there are 10 additional BCMI board members in total, 1 anatomy expert, 1 education expert and 5 assessors. Those individuals are:

Evan Oto, Courtney Ermitage, the anatomy specialist Dr Pilard Hanna, Abby Liberty, Tina Wheeler, Jeremy Miller, Carol Hrejsa, Sara Jarret, Jason Sharpe, education specialist Leah Lebowicz, Mary Kate Wright and Giovanna Santoni. Thanks to each of you for your commitment to the profession!

In addition to all these contributing members, we also have external oversight. The BCMI is a member of the Institute for Credentialing Excellence, and the National Commission for Certifying Agencies. These independent 3rd party credentials are important for ensuring fairness, validity and credibility. Official.

Some benefits of acquiring a CMI credential include professional recognition and marketability, increased earning potential (survey respondents have reported between 7-17% more), employment and career advancement, networking and collaboration opportunities, and continuing education offerings, career growth. 

To be eligible to become a CMI–by the way, AMI membership is not required–there are 3 main  pathways: 

• the first is to go through one of the graduate programs, 

which by default includes graduate-level human anatomy with hands-on dissection, 

• OR, option 2, you can graduate from a recognized undergrad or certificate program 

with having taken a graduate-level gross human anatomy course, 

and 2 years full-time experience working as a medical illustrator, 

• OR, option 3, if you’ve been doing professional medical illustration work for at least 5 years, which you can verify with a letter of reference, then hey sign up! 

Once you qualify, there’s a 2 part process to becoming a CMI. The first is a 5-hour written exam, which has 3 sections. There’s a business section with short answer essay style questions, an anatomy and physiology section with fill-in and multiple-choice questions, and a drawing section which is basic visual problem solving–they don’t actually ask you to draw any medical content. Everything that’s on the exam is content you would have covered in a graduate program and probably the vast majority of it is covered in the undergrad and certificate programs as well. 

After passing the written exam (with a score of 70 or above), you will be sent the super secret requirements for the portfolio section. You then have 2 years to submit your 8 portfolio pieces, note, these can not be student work. You have to submit work you’ve done after graduation. 

These also must get a score of 70 or above. If you don’t hit that score you have 6 months to re-submit that piece. I have a confession to make here–I had to re-submit at least 1 of mine, I might have had to re-submit more, tbh I can’t remember but it wasn’t that big a deal I got em on the next turn. 

The required 8 pieces must include 2 non-surgical pieces showing more than just surface anatomy, at least 1 surgical piece, 1 showing steps in a sequence, 1 piece in line and 1 in color. That’s just 6 requirements, so there’s some flexibility. It just has to be done within 5 years prior to submitting, again, no student work, the pieces should be for audiences above a high school level of education, be free of spelling errors, meet their stated objectives, and can not be “heavily inspired” by someone else’s work. I mean of course, come on, this is your chance to shine don’t bite style. Oh, and all 8 of the pieces can be animation work too. That’s awesome–I don’t think that was always the case. You can check out the BCMI site for more details on what’s required and what’s not allowed.

To maintain and renew one’s CMI credential, you GET to keep learning and refining your skills. The CMI is a 5 year certification term, within this time you get to take 35 hours of continuing education hours to renew the CMI and this is easily done simply by attending AMI meetings. I think 2 or 3 meetings and you’ll be set, but you can also take approved courses which are frequently updated. There’s a whole list that you can comb through and find some really cool stuff to learn about.

I’m really glad Mandy and Christina gave this presentation to provide this information–thank you both for that–and best of all, we have it included on the podcast now!

Jehoon O: The State of Biomedical Art Education in South Korea

Next we had a GOLDEN presentation by the impressive South Korean medical illustration group in attendance. This was so good I wanted to see it TWICE. Adjunct Professor in Biohealth Design at Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea, Jeehon O gave us an overview on the State of Biomedical Art Education in South Korea–showing us first hand HOW IT’S DONE. Jehoon holds a PhD in Anatomy from Yonsei University College of Medicine and an MFA in Biomedical Art from Incheon Catholic University–clearly an effective STRATEGY for his current mission in life.

This was so cool to see and experience. Conference attendees really got a treat here to see history in the making. Jehoon started off with some background on how medical illustration has taken root in South Korea, and went on to describe 3 current initiatives he’s a part of: the Master’s program at Incheon Catholic University, KAMVA, the Korean Association of Medical Visualization Artists, and the Hongik University Bio-COSS Undergraduate Innovative Program. 

When Jehoon started working as a medical illustrator in 2010, there were no formal education programs in Korea or professional associations. There were a handful of medical publishers hiring freelance illustrators, only occasionally hiring a single individual full-time. One company, Koonja Medical Publishing, had hired 5 full time MIs. Professor San Ho Dek–my apologies if I misheard that– a leading anatomist and text book author helped to push for this. It was at this company that Jehoon first got experience working professionally.

Jehoon highlighted several key figures in the evolution of Korean medical illustration such as pioneer Kwan Hyeon Yoon, recruited from Hongik university. He founded Korea’s first biomedical art graduate program at Incheon Catholic University. He later received a PhD in anatomy and went on to teach anatomy and run a company called Med Art.

Another important figure, Dongsu Jang was a sculptor who helped bring medical art into public awareness. He would go on to found Studio MID. He got a lot of media exposure and rightly so, this guy’s work is beautiful. I’m going to include a link to a TED talk he gave in the show notes. I love this quote from his talk, “If you love it, you will know it. After you know it, you will see it. Then it will be different from what you have seen before.” Lots of wisdom in this presentation. I highly recommend it.

Bona Kim, a Johns Hopkins Art as Applied to Medicine graduate who works at Emory University School of Medicine, was also featured in Korean media and has been a source of inspiration for many. 

Asia’s first master’s program in biomedical art was established in 2016 at Incheon Catholic University. Incheon is affiliated with 2 other universities and 2 hospitals. Jehoon shared the curriculum breakdown of medical education and studio art and media training practice in all four semesters of the 2 years masters program. He also shared some demographics on the student’s backgrounds by year who have been in the program.

It was really interesting to see the way they organized their courses–there were similarities and  differences from the program structure I took at grad school. So for example they had an introductory course that served as a bridge between figure drawing and musculo-skeletal anatomy. Seeing the examples from the other courses like anatomical self portraits and surgery made me want to take these courses again with these students. The demonstrated pieces were gorgeous. 

Jehoon talked more about the KAMVA group as well. The Korean Association of Medical Visualization Artists was established in 2018, with notable founding members being Dr. Junsun Ryu, an ENT surgeon at the Korean National Cancer Center and medical illustrator, and the aforementioned Professor Kwan Hyeon Yoon. KAMVA now includes over 600 members–that’s fantastic. Jehoon then gave us some highlights of KAMVA’s recent activities such as workshops and events. 

Recognition of the field and its value is increasing throughout Korea leading to more hospitals and medical schools looking to establish dedicated departments–providing more career opportunities for native Korean medical illustrators.   

Jehoon went on to give an overview of the undergraduate innovative program at Hongik University, under the Biohealth Convergence and Open Sharing System or Bio-COSS government-led initiative which is part of the Digital Innovation Convergence University Project. I guess the idea here is that multiple universities form a consortium to share faculty and resources. Hongik is one of 7 universities taking part I believe it was? It seems online classes are a huge part of how this is able to work but with hands-on activities like medical art, in-person sessions can be, and are, arranged. Professor Chunghun Ha, the Chief of Hongik Bio-COSS was also in attendance at the conference. 

Jehoon showed us some of the content from the course he teaches, “Understanding Life Science through Biological Art” and an overview of yet another educational initiative–the Frontier program. Wow, so many initiatives and courses they’ve got going in Korea! Jehoon, when do you sleep man? Haha.

This was super cool. I really appreciate all the representatives from South Korea making the trip all the way out to Grand Rapids for the conference. They had beautiful pieces in the Salon and made a strong impression on the whole association. Thank you all so much for coming. We've all been inspired by your contributions and look forward to seeing more.

Rachael Whitehead & Joanne Park : “Empowering Healthcare: Showcasing our Scientific Visualization Process and Impact

Concurrently we had Rachael Whitehead & Joanne Park present “Empowering Healthcare: Showcasing our Scientific Visualization Process and Impact”

From the conference website:

The scope of our scientific visualization services at Houston Methodist's Academic Medical Center has expanded significantly in recent years. As an in-house, centralized team supporting all academic departments, they have developed their own project management and organization methods, gaining valuable insights along the way. This session aims to share their experiences with other illustrators working in similar environments, including academic medical centers and healthcare settings, offering ideas on how to effectively organize teams and manage projects.

The presentation will cover the following elements:

• Brief overview of the institution and the team’s unique placement within the institution

• Structure of the scientific visualization team and how it fit into the institution’s academic and research development mission

• Overview of who they support and the services they offer

• Project management, organization and documentation system that has been successful for their team, and how these feed into impact reporting

Rachael Whitehead graduated with her master’s in Biomedical Communications from University of Toronto, a fellow BMC alum, and is a senior scientific illustrator at Houston Methodist. She creates illustrations, infographics and 2D animations for research grants, manuscripts and research posters.

Joanne Park received her master's in Medical Illustration at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and her bachelor’s in Biology from Boston University and is a scientific illustrator at Houston Methodist, where she works with researchers and medical professionals to produce figures for research grants, publications, illustrations for novel surgical procedures, 3D animations, and more.

I’m very sorry I missed this talk, especially given all these topics are near and dear to my heart, but thank you Rachel and Joanne for sharing!

Next up was

AnnElizabeth White: Best Practices in Health Literacy and Patient and Public Education 

I really liked this presentation format–one of the things AnnElizabeth did was show a work-in-progress illustration through various rounds of changes. Why don’t we have a mandatory presentation like this at every meeting?! I absolutely loved this! Every time she presented a new design consideration, AnnElizabeth would update the example piece and show an A & B comparison so you could see the difference it made. It was such an effective and impactful way to do this presentation.

This talk began with a specific communication goal: better understanding of strategies to enhance health literacy. To do this, AnnElizabeth explains, we target audiences with personalized design choices, implement a hierarchy of information, utilize white space and iconography, appropriately format text elements, and consider future iterations of our visualizations such as foreign language translations or motion media. This is all music to my ears. 

Defining health literacy as one’s ability to find, understand, and use information and services to make informed health-related decisions and actions, we must consider the demographics of our intended target audience. Consider the lowest common denominator when it comes to language use and level of education.

Personalizing content can be achieved by aligning your target viewer population with the topics presented in your visuals. You want to use recognizable examples and appropriate metaphors. Use clothing, gestures, and other identifiers to avoid alienating your viewers. Creating thoughtful narratives can also help achieve this–much like what Lydia Gregg demonstrated in her presentation. 

From a broad overview on a project with lots of separate assets, like let’s say separate illustrations or separate pages in a brochure, brand guidelines must be considered to help ensure design consistency. This isn’t just for aesthetics, it helps direct your audience’s focus on what they came here for. It also conveys professionalism and assures the viewer that the content is legitimate and reliable. Consistent design elements like spacing, the color palette, and fonts frees up processing limits of the viewer. 

The first design element AnnElizabeth touched on was white space: the blank, empty space in your image between the various illustrative and design elements. It’s framing all those things! It helps draw attention to them, and it helps audiences navigate through the design and understand the order of importance or dare I say "hierarchy of information”.

I think if you’ve tuned into this podcast you’ve definitely heard about “information hierarchy” at some point, but AnnElizabeth broke this down like an Englishman in a pub explaining the dominance of Manchester United after a few pints. But a lot less rambling and expletives. OK, so not at all like that. Nevermind. Her explanation was wonderful. 

The more we can learn about human perception the more we can effectively design our communication tools. Study of human psychology and perception has taught us about the Serial positioning effect, which says that the first and last bits of information in our design are recalled the best, and we have a limited amount of mental hard drive space to receive and store information, aka our Cognitive processing limit. This means we have to put the most important info in the first few lines of text copy and word our titles strategically. All that time you spent learning about SEO wasn’t in vain. Grab attention, break up the information to make it more scanable and get right to the point–keep it short and sweet.

Text and labels are critical elements in our work. In fact, I might go so far as to say labels make the difference between a medical illustration versus just a visual asset. Do you agree? Let me know in the comments! AnnElizabeth had some great recommendations here: use plain language and if you don’t know what that is look it up and know specifically what plain language is, write in the active voice with positive intonations, be succinct, use lists, use numerals (not spelled out numbers), and be sure to spell out and define acronyms (OMG please for the love of all that is good, this is one of my biggest pet peeves of all time, please, please explain your acronyms, please). You also want to avoid idioms, slang, humour, passive voice, negative phrasing, large verbose paragraphs, technical jargon, unexplained terms or using different terms for the same thing. We run into this all the time in our patient ed pieces–it’s unfortunately really easy to bounce between “surgery”, “procedure” and “operation” in the text copy for a patient ed piece but this is a no-no. Pick one and stick with it.

Iconography is the use of symbols in your work–these can be great ways to quickly capture a concept and help with comprehension, they function very much like visual mnemonic devices. They’re also a lot of fun to make! I love making little icon organs. It was wild to see how just adding two little icons to her demo design made such an impact–it instantly made the composition more scannable.

Now, we’ve done a few foreign language translations where I work, and this isn’t as simple as copy + paste. I’m glad AnnElizabeth touched on this and demonstrated the kinds of layout adjustments you might need to make to accommodate other languages, especially if they are read right to left, or top to bottom. Considering multi-use deliverables usually means you’re thinking about how this will look in print as well as on a screen, and how it will look on different devices–so we’ll often use a responsive design approach which is standard practice in web design. Maximizing accessibility might also mean considering the your color palette and the degree of color contrast in the overall design so that even individuals with any of the various types of color deficiency will still be able to understand the core messages in your image.

Talk about a crash course in best practices for patient materials, this was phenomenal! I feel ready to tackle a new project after this talk! AnnElizabeth count this one as a home run–I think this talk was absolutely flawless. Thanks so much for contributing and I hope I get to see you present again some day!

Next was

Dr Martine Dunnwald : Self-protection and Self-identity or the Fairy Tell of the Skin

Here’s Martine with a few words to share about her talk…

Oh! Beautiful! Martine, so elegant in your words and presentation style. This was a phenomenal addition to the conference program. So relevant to so many of us. Have you ever noticed how skin just finds its way into so many medical illustration projects? It’s fascinating, sometimes it’s getting the edges of cut skin to look right in a surgical illustration, other times it’s getting that cellular neighbourhood depicted correctly for an animation shot. There’s never enough time to get all the details right, but that’s where a talk like this one, where you’ve got an expert taking you on a guided tour of the subject, comes to save your skin! 

Dr. Martine Dunnwald, Research Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Iowa and recent past President of the American Association for Anatomy took us on a deep dive of our largest organ—the skin. She’s devoted her career to understanding the skin, focusing particularly on keratinocytes – the cells that make up most of our epidermis. Her research spans stem cells, engineered skin models, wound healing, and the molecular mechanisms of how our skin develops and renews itself. Side note: if you missed my conference coverage of the AAA meeting held in Toronto in 2024, be sure to check that one out! I’ll be sure to put a link in the show notes.

In this talk, we explored the skin not just as a biological marvel, but also as identity, as communication, as the very boundary between self and world. Because as Dr. Dunnwald puts it, skin is simultaneously deep and superficial, permeable and impermeable. It protects us while connecting us to everything around us.

Dr. Dunnwald showed how skin operates on multiple layers – literally and metaphorically. The epidermis, that thin outer layer we see and touch, is constantly regenerating. Every 28 to 42 days, you essentially have brand new skin. Yet paradoxically, your skin also carries permanent markers of your identity.

Skin is the crucial barrier that literally keeps you alive. Without this protective integrity, survival would be impossible. As Dr. Dunnwald emphasizes, "the earlier an organ is formed, the more important it is," and skin develops very early in our embryonic life.

Dr. Dunnwald highlighted several main characters in the story of the skin: the aforementioned keratinocytes, Merkel cells, Langerhans cells, and melanocytes. Here's something that might surprise you: skin color has nothing to do with the number of melanocytes – the pigment-producing cells – in your skin. Whether you're pale or dark-skinned, you have roughly the same number of these cells. Even people with albinism have the same number of melanocytes; they simply can't produce melanin due to a genetic variation. This revelation speaks to something profound about human identity and the arbitrary nature of racial categories. We're more similar than different, quite literally under the skin.

Dr. Dunnwald describes skin as "the first tool of knowledge," and she's absolutely right. Before we can see, before we can hear clearly, we can feel. Touch is our first way of understanding the world, making skin our most fundamental sensory organ. Think about it: every emotional state, every physical sensation, every interaction with our environment happens through this remarkable interface. Skin doesn't just protect us from the world – it connects us as well.

As we age, our skin tells time in fascinating ways. The junction between the dermis and epidermis – that crucial meeting place between layers – becomes flatter over time. Collagen changes its structure, and elastin becomes disorganized and reduced. These aren't just cosmetic changes; they're markers of our journey through life. Even identical twins, despite sharing DNA, can have different fingerprints. Our skin carries both our genetic blueprint and the unique story of our individual experiences.

Here's where Dr. Dunnwald's clinical insights become particularly compelling. Skin isn't just about what's happening on the surface – it's a reflection of our internal organ function, because conditions like eczema often indicate that the body is creating a more protected external layer when something inside is vulnerable.

Hair, too, exists in "full continuity with the skin." When skin health is restored in clinical settings, healthy hair growth typically follows. It's all connected.

So, the next time you feel the sun on your skin, or comfort someone with a gentle touch, remember: you're experiencing one of the most sophisticated, beautiful, and complex organs in the natural world. Your skin isn't just protecting you – it's connecting you to everything and everyone around you. Guys, this talk was like scientific poetry.

Peg Gerrity - The Elders Project: Painting Portraits of Alaska’s Tlingit Community

Closing out the conference was former guest on the podcast Peg Gerrity who presented “The Elders Project: Painting Portraits of Alaska’s Tlingit Community”. This was so cool, Peg actually gave a plug for this on our episode together. She had just embarked on this journey I believe when we did that interview. 

Peg started off with the backstory on how this all came about. She explained how she used to do a lot of photography, aaand then Arthritis hit. That sucks. I totally sympathize with that, I am fearing carpal tunnel myself. Then at the 2019 AMI meeting in Milwaukee, she saw and was enthralled by Laura Roy’s sketchbook. I feel this too! I’ve seen Laura’s sketchbooks, they’re incredible! Around the same time, her daughter Sam Bond–another past guest on the podcast, link the show notes– started to develop a daily art streak. Not an easy thing to do, but absolutely worth the effort. This daily sketching habit was something Peg wanted to embrace as well, so, she started bringing sketchbooks everywhere she went. She decided to lean into watercolor paintings, and set her eyes on searching for good subjects. 

So now, imagine traveling to one of the most remote places on Earth, expecting maybe twenty people to show up for your art project, and instead finding yourself face-to-face with 180 community members eager to share their stories. This is exactly what ended up happening to Peg Gerrity when she embarked on what would become one of the most meaningful projects of her career: painting portraits of the Elders of Alaska's Tlingit community.

Peg's path to the remote corners of Alaska began about five years ago, when she made what she calls a "segue" from medical illustration to becoming a watercolor Artist in Residence, working in some of the world's most remote and culturally rich locations: Alaska, Africa, and the Galapagos Islands.

This transition wasn't just a career change – it was a fundamental shift in how she understood the purpose of her art. Where medical illustration required clinical precision, her new work demanded something different: the ability to capture not just anatomical accuracy, but human dignity and cultural truth.

Peg's journey as an Artist in Residence began with the Churchill Wild program, where she learned the practical realities of working in remote locations. She found herself painting travel blogs for agencies, capturing landscapes, and even naming polar bears to keep track of them during her stays. It was here that she began exploring what would become her signature approach: "capturing the colors beneath the skin." This phrase reveals the intersection of her medical training and artistic vision – understanding that portraiture isn't just about surface features, but about the underlying structures and the life force they contain.

When the opportunity arose to work with the Tlingit community at Icy Strait Point, Alaska, Peg was stepping into sacred territory – literally and figuratively. The word "Tlingit" means "human," and Glacial Bay represents their traditional homeland, a place where their ancestors lived until the glacier began advancing around 1750, forcing them to relocate. This wasn't just a painting assignment. This was an invitation to witness and document a living culture, to honor the faces and stories of Elders who carry centuries of knowledge and experience. While Peg initially expected maybe twenty people to participate, instead, 180 community members showed up. Think about what that means: in a small, remote Alaskan community, nearly everyone wanted their Elders honored through art. This overwhelming response spoke to something deeper than curiosity about a visiting artist – it revealed the profound hunger for recognition, for dignity, for having their stories and faces treated with reverence.

With such an unexpected turnout, Peg had to adapt quickly. Only one portrait could be done live, with the rest working from photographic references. But here's what's remarkable: she donated all the photos back to the community. This wasn't about building her portfolio or keeping souvenirs – this was about service. Peg's presentation emphasized five crucial considerations that guided every brushstroke of this project. These aren't just artistic techniques – they're moral imperatives for anyone representing other people's lives and cultures:

• Vulnerability. When someone sits for a portrait, they're making themselves vulnerable. They're trusting you to see them truly and represent them fairly. For Elders, this vulnerability is even more profound – they're entrusting you with the visual legacy of their lifetime of experiences.

• Dignity. As Peg puts it, "Every person has inherent dignity, and the job of a portrait artist is to connect with and highlight that dignity." Capturing a likeness is important, but it's secondary to capturing the essence of who someone is.

• Humility. A critical aspect of the project was maintaining humility. As an outsider, even a welcomed one, Peg had to constantly check herself to ensure she wasn't speaking "for" her subjects, but rather amplifying their voices.

• Anatomy. Peg's medical illustration training provided more than technical skill – it gave her a framework for truth-telling. Just as medical illustrators must bring "greater diversity to educational materials" while maintaining anatomical accuracy, portrait artists working across cultures must balance artistic interpretation with respectful representation.

• and Reverence. Working with Elders isn't just about painting faces – it's about honoring the accumulated wisdom of lifetimes. Each portrait became an act of reverence, acknowledging not just the individual, but their role as keepers of cultural knowledge and community memory.

The most honest part of Peg's process was her acknowledgment of bias. Every artist brings their own perspective, their own cultural background, their own assumptions to their work. The question isn't whether bias exists – it's what you do about it.

Peg's approach involved extensive research and consultation. When writing descriptions of her work, she contacted community consultants to ensure accuracy and appropriateness. This wasn't just about getting facts right – it was about ensuring her artistic voice didn't drown out the voices she was meant to amplify.

"Amplify voices of the community and not your own" – this became Peg's guiding principle. But what does amplification actually look like in practice? It means stepping back when necessary, asking questions instead of making assumptions, and understanding that sometimes the most powerful thing an artist can do is create space for others to speak.

Peg Gerrity's Elders Project offers profound lessons for anyone who creates work about other people – whether you're a medical illustrator working with diverse populations, a documentary filmmaker, a journalist, or any artist whose work intersects with community and culture. The project reminds us that technical skill – even the precise anatomical knowledge that comes from medical training – is just the foundation. The real art lies in approaching each subject with vulnerability, dignity, humility, anatomical understanding, reverence, and honest acknowledgment of your own biases.

This was a beautiful project! You really have to see these images to catch the vibe and appreciate the incredible skill of Peg’s watercolour aptitude. Just incredible. 

Outro

Aaand that, ladies and gentlemen, was the 79th annual conference of the Association of Medical Illustrators! I want to give a big thanks to all the speakers from this year’s conference, especially those who shared a soundbite with us so we could hear it directly from the source. This made it really fun for me to put together. I also love how it elevated this episode and gave us a visceral feeling of what it was like to be there in person.

Now I know this was probably a little over the top for what I could have done. I could have made this a whole lot easier on myself but I chose to do it the way I most enjoy. That meant taking notes at every talk I went to, following up and watching the videos or scan through the slides posted the HUB afterwards to catch the talks I missed or get refreshed on the ones I went to. Chase after people to get these soundbites—and hey that was worth every minute I put into it—that elevated this podcast to historic proportions. Ladies and gentlemen, this has GOT to be the World Record for most medical illustrators on a single podcast! 

Planning Committee

Big shout out to the AMI meeting planning committee, which included Emily Hromi from my last episode, and Scott Weldon, Katie Allen, Tal Bavli, Kevin Brennan, Kristen Browne, Vanessa Dudley, Jennifer Fairman, Emi Frohn, Leah Lebowicz, Brianna Monroe, Derek Ng, and Marcelo Oliver.

OK I feel like Scott Weldon, has been on every conference planning committee for like, forever, so I just want to take a quick second and share this clip from Scott:

Conference Sponsors

Lastly, I also want to give a big shout out and thanks to the conference sponsors, obviously this couldn’t happen without their support. A big thanks to Barrow Neurological Institute, AXS Studio, Focus Graphics, Mayo Clinic, the Medical Illustration & Animation Sourcebook,  Cognition Studio, Inc., and Kendall College of Art and Design.

That does it for this episode of the podcast! I hope you enjoyed this vicarious conference experience. I really tried to make something worth your time. Every year we acknowledge, recognize, award, celebrate, pay tribute, remember and honor so many names within our profession, and I really want to extend that recognition into another medium that can help to spread the word about what we do and contribute to posterity. I was just watching a video over lunch on the layers of ancient buildings–how sometimes they will find building after building just piled right on top of one another over hundreds of years. That really puts things into perspective when you think about how knowledge is attempted to be passed down and survive the ravages of time. Who knows? Maybe an electromagnetic pulse will one day wipe out all our digital records, or maybe this podcast will get scraped by AI and because of that, one day when someone’s prompting a writeup on medical illustration, the response will hallucinate and pop the name Gary Lees or Carol Donner in there. And that person will be like, wtf? And Google the person, and be like, oh! Hey look at that, buried away in this ancient layer of the digital record we have some names of real people who were real medical illustrators, back in the heyday of the turn of the 21st century. I know I’m rambling, but, to be honest–that’s also why I do this. Despite the many fragmented minutes and hours of chipping away at these conference podcast scripts while riding public transit or waiting in line for a coffee, I get a chance to share my authentic voice. Literally. I get to share my voice, and I get to put something down for the record. I get to help write the record, and live transcribe it. 

So whoever you are listener, from wherever in time and space, I hope I succeeded in bringing a little brain enrichment to your ears, I hope your mind began to wander and tried to imagine what these people looked like, how much art work stacked up high behind each of them, and I hope you’re inspired to dig deeper, think about how you too can contribute to humanity’s collective archive of knowledge and progress, and how you can seek out and fan the flames of your own authentic voice. Until next time, stay connected, stay inspired, stay curious, and stay up.