The project represents a collaboration among anthropologists, archeologists, medical imaging specialists, and cardiologists from St. Luke's Mid America Heart Institute (US) and the University of Western Ontario (Canada). The goal is to build a large-scale database of digital images of mummies to investigate several research questions in Egyptology and other fields. The project is also requesting $80,917 from the Canadian funder.
The IMPACT (Internet-based Mummy Picture Archive and Communication Technology) Radiological Mummy Database Project is designed to provide mummy and medical researchers with a large-scale comparative database of medical imaging of mummified human remains. This departure from a case-study model for mummy studies will drive the field towards a large-scale comparative and epidemiological paradigm. The Canadian team will be investigating the evisceration and excerebration components of the Egyptian mummification tradition, and the US teams will apply the database to a greatly expanded study of atherosclerosis in ancient Egyptian mummies, as part of the IMPACT Ancient Health Research Group, and to the refinement of a novel system of diagnosis by consensus for mummified remains.