In the HoloAnatomy Lab with Dr. Sue Wish-Baratz

Dr. Sue Wish-Baratz with a first year CWRU medical student examining a HoloAnatomy hologram.

Everyone remembers their first mixed-reality experience. It’s somehow both natural and astonishing to interact with shared digital artifacts, and the initial reaction always seems to be, “Wow.”

I first donned a Microsoft HoloLens a couple weeks ago in the Interactive Commons at Case Western Reserve University, the lab that developed the HoloAnatomy® learning platform, which enables the exploration of a 3D representation of the human body.

“It's the most amazing thing ever,” a first year medical student says when I ask her to compare HoloAnatomy to the cadaver lab.

“I trained it on my room sideways so I can lie on the couch while I explore the vascular system," she says. "It was freaking my cat out, me standing there looking into empty space.”

Beyond the Tony Stark coolness of using holograms to teach anatomy, research suggests that HoloAnatomy helps students learn twice as fast compared to cadaveric dissection. And the time and resources saved on cadaver labs enabled the curriculum to expand and encompass physical exams, ultrasound skills, and deeper radiology exploration.

In less time than it takes to create a PowerPoint deck, CWRU Associate Professor of Anatomy Sue Wish-Baratz creates customized lessons to guide her students through the body’s regions, systems, and organs. She served as master anatomist during the development of HoloAnatomy software, guiding the creation of the visual system.

After a brief overview of the elements of the lung to be studied, Dr. Wish-Baratz says to her class, “Now go explore.”

The thirty or so students form small circles around the room, each group gathered around its own skeleton, standing there as if at attention.

I join a circle to examine the softly glowing skeleton before us, organs revealed like an intricate internal puzzle.

I’m immediately lost by the technical depth of the conversation that ensues, but thanks to the digital labels—pinned like artful banners to their corresponding parts—I’m able to at least follow which element the students are exploring.

Dr. Wish-Baratz passes, saying, “Notice the brachiating continues until it’s microscopic.”

I drift around the room watching the students gesture and confer in low voices, leaning into the hologram to see the lung’s composite parts, and it’s clear that what I’m witnessing is the future of medical education.

AlensiaXR, the company CWRU spun out to share this extraordinary learning platform with the world, is working to expand the offering, which already includes recently released HoloAnatomy® Neuro software—the world’s first Mixed Reality–based collaborative holographic experience to teach neuroanatomy. Soon to follow will be applications for Dental, Pathology, and Physiology.

These students interacting with HoloAnatomy software are engrossed, engaged, and perhaps unaware that they are pioneers, fortunate to be among the first to advance their medical education using holographic models.