Back in highschool, I was in the middle of basketball practice, when I suddenly felt an acute pain in my knee. I had no idea what had happened to me. After visits to several different clinics, none of which could identify the problem, I finally found an orthopedist who accurately guessed the cause of my pain: The anterior cruciate ligament — one of four major ligaments of the knee, which controls anterior movements of the tibia — had been severed.
Before performing an endoscopy to check my ligament's condition, the doctor drew a simple diagram of the knee to explain where the ligament is and how it could've been torn apart. Having never heard of the anterior cruciate ligament, it was difficult back then to visualize the problem from a rudimentary drawing, or know exactly where and what the ligament was.
Yesterday, however, I picked up my tablet, and with just a few swipes of my fingers I was able to pull up a 3-D illustration of the internal knee and highlight the ligament, which is hidden within it. Not only that but I could rotate the image to see how the fibrous tissue looks from all angles, and how it aligns with the bones, muscles, nerves and blood vessels.
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