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Assessment of Mixed-Reality Technology Use in Remote Online Anatomy Education

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has presented challenges for education worldwide, especially in medical schools that rely on cadaver-based dissection for anatomy. The advent of commercial mixed-reality (MR) technology, such as the HoloLens (Microsoft Corporation), offers new possibilities for anatomy education.1 At CaseWestern Reserve University (CWRU), the state of Ohio’s shelter in place order meant that students did not return from spring break in 2020, requiring an urgent modification to the anatomy curriculum, which has featured MR technology since 2018.2. We report our initial experience using MR to teach anatomy remotely to students located throughout North America.

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Mixed Reality as a time-efficient alternative to cadaveric dissection

The extent of medical knowledge increases yearly, but the time available for students to learn is limited, leading to administrative pressures to revise and reconfigure medical school curricula. The goal of the study was to determine whether the mixed reality platform HoloAnatomy® Software represents an effective and time-efficient modality to learn anatomy when compared to traditional cadaveric dissection.

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Mixed Reality Anatomy Using Microsoft HoloLens and Cadaveric Dissection: A Comparative Effectiveness Study

As the amount of curricular material required of medical students increases, less time is available for anatomy; thus, methods to teach anatomy more efficiently and effectively are necessary. In this randomized controlled trial, researchers looked at the effectiveness of a mixed reality device to teach musculoskeletal anomy to medical students compared with traditional cadaveric dissection. 

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Cadaver vs. Microsoft HoloLens: A Comparison of Educational Outcomes of a Breast Anatomy Module

Microsoft Hololens mixed reality technology offers students a novel modality to visualize clinically important anatomical structures, such as the breast, which are uniquely challenging to discern with the naked eye in traditional cadaveric dissection. In this study, a 3D anatomical model of the breast was developed and integrated it into a dynamic, educational module on the HoloLens. The educational outcomes and overall impressions of medical students learning breast anatomy through our module, as compared with traditional dissection are reported in the study. 

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Scientists Are Turning Your Body into Holograms

In 2014 radiology professor Mark Griswold was looking for a new way to teach anatomy. Running a cadaver lab can be expensive, and corpses offer surprisingly limited views into the body. In the midst of his search, he was invited to Microsoft’s top secret testing facility. He expected to be shown a virtual reality headset, a potentially useful tool for teaching. Instead, technicians outfitted him with something even more groundbreaking: a mixed reality headset, called HoloLens, the first self-contained computer that allows users to see holograms amid their surroundings.

The experience was so overwhelming that he had to sit down: “I immediately knew my world had changed that day.” The headset, he realized, would be invaluable in the classroom.

Griswold and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic set out to design a program for HoloLens that would revolutionize anatomy lessons. Last year they released HoloAnatomy, a demonstration application that transforms images into 3-D models of the human body’s bones and organs and enables students to explore their shape and movement from every angle.

Virtual reality immerses users into an alternate world, removed from their surroundings. HoloLens is different: “Physical and holographic objects coexist and interact in real time,” says Microsoft’s Lorraine Bardeen. In classrooms this means students can communicate with teachers, peers, and a holographic display during a lesson.

 “I don’t see a class on campus that won’t be affected by the technology,” says Griswold.

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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.

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