1 May 2012 Last updated at 08:26 ET By Robin Banerji BBC World Service

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Martin Clayton, senior curator of the Royal Collection, shows Fergus Walsh some of the exhibition highlights

The largest exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings of the human body goes on display in the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace this week. So how accurate were they?

During his lifetime, Leonardo made thousands of pages of notes and drawings on the human body.

He wanted to understand how the body was composed and how it worked. But at his death in 1519, his great treatise on the body was incomplete and his scientific papers were unpublished.

Based on what survives, clinical anatomists believe that Leonardo's anatomical work was hundreds of years ahead of its time, and in some respects it can still help us understand the body today.

So how do these drawings, sketched more than 500 years ago, compare to what digital imaging technology can tell us today?

From a notebook dated 1489, there is a series of meticulous drawings of the skull.

Leonardo has cut off the front of the face to show what lies beneath. It is difficult to cut these bones without damaging them. And elsewhere in his papers, Leonardo left a drawing of the knives he used.

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How accurate were Leonardo's anatomy drawings?