The Hospiten Group, together with the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, has launched a pioneering research project that aims to digitize, using non-invasive techniques and new technologies for medical imaging, 21 specimens of Guanche mummies (between complete bodies and fragments, such as skulls) exhibited at the Museum of Nature and Archeology of Tenerife (MUNA).
Leading the research is Manuel Maynar Moliner, Professor and Chair of Medical Technologies at ULPGC and physician at Hospiten, and Juan Ruiz Alzola, professor at ULPGC and coordinator of MACbioIDi, who manage the technical, health and teaching aspects.
The photographic and audiovisual study has been recorded minute by minute and the result of the work is explained in a documentary recently produced under the name Guanche Mummies: Living History of the Canary Islands.
The audiovisual production explains the function of the program used on paleoimaging, with CT scanning and MRI of the Guanche mummies, in which this avant-garde technique is used, whose objective is to develop medical technology and training programs. In this sense, the purpose of the project is to obtain digital data to facilitate anthropological research into skeletal and soft tissue pathology of the Guanches.
Maximum use was made of the modern technology provided by the Hospiten Group, especially the magnetic resonance imaging and computerized axial tomography (CT) used in the research process.
The initiative of Museums of Tenerife, the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Hospiten is one of the most relevant research projects in medical imaging on mummified Guanche remains. This new work allows the advancement in knowledge of skeletal and soft tissue pathology of the Guanches in bioanthropological data and in the procedures to which the mummies were subjected in the 19th and 20th centuries.