Healthcare6 min readSeptember 25, 2026

Prosthetic Atlas: Know Your Options. Own Your Next Step.

Prosthetic Atlas is an independent educational reference that gives prosthesis users the vocabulary to participate as equals in their own care. Three content pathways — Motion, Fit, and The Visit — with a 3D anatomical explorer, gait comparison tool, fit guidance, and a Brief Builder that turns browsing into a printable appointment plan.

The prosthetist speaks in millimetres of alignment, degrees of flexion resistance, and names of knee systems the wearer has never heard of. The wearer speaks in "it hurts when I walk downstairs" and "the afternoon is worse than the morning." Both are describing the same problem. Neither can fully understand the other’s language.

Prosthetic Atlas exists to close that vocabulary gap.

What Prosthetic Atlas is

Prosthetic Atlas is an independent educational reference. It is not a diagnosis, a prescription, or a ranking of products. It is a guide to parts, movement, fit, cost, and the questions worth asking — built for the person wearing the prosthesis.

All data is stored locally in the browser. No external transmission. No account required for browsing. The wearer explores at their own pace, on their own terms.

Three content pathways

Prosthetic Atlas organizes education around three things the wearer needs before their next appointment:

Motion: understand the stride

The gait comparison tool lets users slow a stride and compare two knees on the same clock. Side-by-side analysis shows how different knee systems handle the same phase of gait — stance, swing, transition — making visible the mechanical differences that determine how walking actually feels.

This is not a clinical gait lab. It is an educational instrument that gives the wearer the ability to see what their prosthetist sees — and to ask informed questions about why one system might suit their life better than another.

Fit: understand the day

Socket comfort is not a single measurement. It changes across a day as volume fluctuates, activity accumulates, and the interface between limb and liner shifts. The Fit pathway explains these dynamics — why the morning feels different from the afternoon, what liner properties affect comfort, and how socket design choices translate to daily experience.

The wearer who understands that their discomfort at 4 PM is likely a volume change rather than a socket defect arrives at the appointment with a more useful observation than "it hurts in the afternoon."

The Visit: prepare the conversation

The Brief Builder is the output layer. As the wearer explores Motion and Fit, they can compile goals, questions, and model notes into a structured brief — printable, portable, and ready to hand to the prosthetist at the start of the appointment.

The Brief Builder does not prescribe. It organises. The wearer decides what matters. The Atlas provides the vocabulary. The brief carries both into the consultation.

The 3D anatomical explorer

The interactive 3D explorer lets users examine prosthetic components in three dimensions — rotate, isolate layers, and understand spatial relationships between the residual limb, liner, socket, and structural components.

All 3D viewer geometries are generalised educational reference models — not body scans, not custom fit representations, not measured pressure maps. The educational boundary is explicit and deliberate.

The prosthetic care triad

Prosthetic Atlas completes a three-product set within the health stack:

SOMA — research and design tools for the prosthetist. Guided care journeys, pressure visualization, 3D/4D inspection, seven research frontiers. Centres design on lived experience.
STRIDE — personal records for the wearer. Document socket fit, track changes, compare activities, prepare conversations with evidence.
Prosthetic Atlas — independent education for both. Understand parts, movement, fit, and the questions worth asking.

SOMA gives the designer the day. STRIDE gives the wearer a voice. Prosthetic Atlas gives both a shared vocabulary.