In 1986, the Visible Human Project^® (VHP), an outgrowth of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) Long-Range Plan, was begun under the leadership of Michael J. Ackerman, assistant director for high-performance computing and communications at the NLM.

The Visible Human Project has created publicly-available complete, anatomically detailed, three-dimensional representations of a human male body and a human female body. Specifically, the VHP provides a public-domain library of cross-sectional cryosection, CT, and MRI images obtained from one male cadaver and one female cadaver. The Visible Man data set was publicly released in 1994 and the Visible Woman in 1995.

The VHP data sets have been applied to a wide range of educational, diagnostic, treatment planning, virtual reality, artistic, mathematical, and industrial uses. About 4,000 licensees from 66 countries were authorized to access the datasets. As of 2019, a license was no longer required to access the VHP datasets.