How Virtual Anatomy Will Change Med School

Put on the HoloLens visor… and you’ll find yourself staring at a life-size, 3D human figure, with every vein and artery in perfect bodily placement and scale. You can walk around this anatomically correct scaffold, spying organs and tissues from any angle, and poke your head in to see the interior of, say, a heart. Within, you’ll see that organ’s distinct chambers—and within those, the discrete valves.

What is most striking is that this body seems to take up real physical space. Everyone who dons the goggles sees the same images, making medical instruction easier—and the fact that you experience the real world along with the virtual one makes conversation and consultation easier, too.

The idea is to teach students anatomy in a way that they absorb the knowledge more readily, more intuitively—and more quickly. Seeing and “touching” intertwined veins and arteries as they navigate through the human form gives you an understanding of circulation that is difficult (or maybe impossible) to get by studying even the most finely etched schematic in a textbook.