UF College of Veterinary Medicine
Public Relations Office

Theriogenology has new Web database
thanks to professor's labor of love

Early in his career as a professor of animal reproduction, Dr. Maarten Drost came into an inheritance of sorts. During a year spent as a visiting professor at Cornell University 's College of Veterinary Medicine , Drost gained access to two drawers of slides left to him by Dr. Stephen J. Roberts upon Roberts' retirement. Roberts, a theriogenologist, authored what at that time was the major textbook in the field.

“I thanked him for leaving them to me, but they were kind of a mess, frankly,” Drost said. He subsequently organized and catalogued those slides and convinced his employer at that time, the University of California/Davis , to pay for copying all the slides -- for which there were no duplicates -- and began building a database.

When he came to the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine as an assistant professor in 1977, he was asked what he needed to set up shop.

“I told them I needed a slide cabinet with racks and ways to organize them,” said Drost, who retired in 2003 from the UF veterinary faculty and is now an emeritus professor.

Three years into retirement, Drost's time continues to be devoted to developing a slide database as a teaching tool for the veterinarians of the future.

His Web site, “The Drost Project Visual Guide,” can be found at www.drostproject.vetmed.ufl.edu and is a work in progress even though the bovine reproduction section is nearly complete.

“It's completed, but it will never be finished,” Drost said. “The joy of the Internet is, you never run out of shelf space.”

A click of a mouse gets you to the cow, and in fact to many of the other parts of the site that are still under development. Those include guides to bubaline, equine and canine reproduction, areas Drost hopes to flesh out in the next few years.

Meanwhile, veterinarians or veterinary students wanting information about the male or female bovine reproductive systems, wanting to brush up on techniques involved in reproductive technology -- embryo transfer, artificial insemination or ultrasonography to name a few -- or view embryos at different stages of development have visuals immediately available to them on the site.

“I'm not a photographer, personally,” Drost said. “Of all the images I have, 98 percent came from others or were taken by others. Mark Hoffenberg here at the college has taken quite a few.”

Helping Drost to develop his site has been Gwen Cornwell, Ph.D., on whose doctoral committee Drost served back in the mid 1980s. The two stayed in touch, and when Cornwell formed a computer service business, Drost went to her for help.

“She had connections with people who develop software and I had funding from Pharmacia Upjohn, West Coast Medical and other sources,” Drost said. “It was start-up funding. When I took my sabbatical in 1999, I stayed in-house and devoted that time to developing the Web site. I've been clicking away at it ever since.”

The American College of Theriogenologists put out an announcement about Drost's Web resource last March and immediately Cornwell noted that the hits on the site had jumped from about 3,000 to 6,000.

“A similar thing happened with the American Association of Bovine Practitioners,” Drost said. “They said they'd announce it on their mailing list and two weeks later, the hits were at 7,700.”

The Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association plans to run an announcement relating to Drost's Web site in the June 1, 2006 issue.

Drost's longtime former colleagues, Dr. Victor Shille, who worked in the area of small animal reproduction and edited the professional journal Theriogenology for 30 years, and Dr. Woody Asbury, former large animal clinical sciences department chair and interim dean of the college who is a specialist in equine reproduction, both have agreed to help Drost build the site by contributing assorted images from their own slide collections.

“I asked Woody to pick out 200 of his best slides from his equine collection,” Drost said. “He still needs to add titles and descriptions and any comments he likes to make on certain issues as soon as we add a Web-based development site.”

Drs. Karine Onclin and John Verstegen, small animal reproduction specialists who now work in the college's theriogenology group, have also agreed to contribute images to the canine and feline visual guides.

“The Drost Project Visual Guide is a masterful collection of clinical images collected by Dr. Drost during his career as a theriogenologist and educator,” said Dr. Carlos Risco, a professor of dairy medicine in the UF's Food Animal Medicine and Reproduction Service. “The images are clear and organized in an easy to follow manner that reflects Maarten's teaching skills. In addition, a brief caption provides an update on presentation and etiology of the case.”

Risco said the cyber atlas provides “a quick refresher course” on cases commonly seen by practitioners. He added that he uses the guide extensively in class lectures and in seminars to colleagues around the world.

“Maarten's willingness to share these images reflects his lifetime passion for theriogenology,” Risco said. “He has globalized the teaching of theriogenology so that information can pass from educators to practitioners. Practitioners engaged in the training of farm personnel will use it extensively.”