When you first put on the lens, you're struck by the detail and the ability to engage with the model in front of you. It stimulates questions. It sparks intrigue. It enables you to customize what you’re looking at and switch to something else on a dime. And that level of flexibility—from a teaching and learning perspective—is the way of the future and ahead of its time.

We feed off students’ excitement, and they were just oohing and ahhing. We had described HoloAnatomy to students. Of course, it’s not the same as putting the device on your head for the first time and seeing the models pop up in the room and being able to walk around them. We have this new space where we run lab sessions, a big open room with glass doors, and people walking by could witness the excitement of our students. It's a lot of fun. Our Dean came in and walked around and got to experience it. The HoloAnatomy experience creates a lot of joy and excitement at ATSU.

Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) today announced it has won the 2023 Microsoft Mixed Reality Partner of the Year Award. CWRU and licensing partner AlensiaXR were honored among a global field for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer-solutions based on Microsoft technology.

“From the first moment we saw HoloLens, we knew mixed reality would be a transformational education tool, and we welcome this acknowledgement of the hard work our team put into envisioning, developing and deploying the HoloAnatomy® Software Suite,” said Mark Griswold, professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

“Thanks to this software, anatomy became one of my favorite and strongest subjects,” Ethan says. “HoloAnatomy makes learning about the human body more accessible—something that can be tackled even by someone who’s completely new to the rigors of the medical school curriculum.”

Mixed Reality blends real-world environments with digital content, both co-existing and interacting in real time. And it is this unique ability that makes MR ideal for immersive, interactive experiences like learning human anatomy—HoloAnatomy software is designed to work with any MR headset.

Former NFL player Josh Cribbs and his hilarious wife share the wonders of the HoloAnatomy® learning platform on their show, "Cribbs in the CLE!"

Saint Joseph Academy is the first high school in the nation to utilize the HoloAnatomy Software suite. Anatomy lessons have taken on a new dimension. “We want to give them the best tools available​,” said Saint Joseph Academy President Katheyn Purcell.

“It definitely makes it a lot easier to understand [anatomy] — and it's more fun as well,” said junior Elizabeth Krotine. “You get to interact with your classmates and discuss what you're seeing.”

“Thanks to this software, anatomy became one of my favorite and strongest subjects,” Ethan says. “HoloAnatomy makes learning about the human body more accessible—something that can be tackled even by someone who’s completely new to the rigors of the medical school curriculum.”

“After more than 30 years of traditional anatomy instruction, my approach to education has been forever transformed by this remarkable holographic teaching tool.“

CWRU medical students—pioneers in medical education

Delivering the Future of Dental Education

Students learning anatomy by looking at a hologram sounds like something from a university in the far future. But that’s how it’s done right now at Case Western Reserve University.

When CWRU developed the 3D HoloAnatomy® Software Suite of medical education software several years ago to teach anatomy without the use of cadavers, it soon learned there was an appetite for this technological advancement at universities around the world. But universities are not as nimble as business startups. So CWRU created the company AlensiaXR to market its HoloAnatomy software. “(Universities) are built to teach and learn,” said AlensiaXR CEO Mark Day. “You need a private sector organization to be able to (advance a new technology) as a business.”

In the future, AlensiaXR plans to expand the HoloAnatomy software to other medical academic subjects, such as physiology.

A glimpse of the future of education.

Using HoloLens, CWRU’s Interactive Commons developed HoloAnatomy Software Suite​… ​A​nd results were promising.​ ​In a study published in Medical Science Educator in November 2019, students were shown to grasp concepts twice as fast using HoloAnatomy as they would with 2D models.

“We took one of the oldest classes that you can imagine, human anatomy, and in a period of about five years, we went from hundreds of years of history to teaching in this new way,” Griswold says.

In the time since, 17 schools, including one as far as Poland as well as the United Kingdom’s esteemed Oxford University, have adopted curriculums featuring the HoloAnatomy Software Suite.

“We’ve been given this opportunity to lead the world in this area. As a region, we can adopt this as our future,” Griswold says. “We should be amazingly proud as a city.”

Nancy Farrow, senior VP of marketing for AlensiaXR, a company formed to market and sell CWRU’s invention, explained that the HoloAnatomy platform can visualize complex anatomical structures and systems, allowing students to freely move in and out of holograms for more collaborative anatomy lessons.

“You simply put on a HoloLens headset, and a human body appears in three dimensions — the anchored hologram is like magic, empowering students and teachers to literally immerse themselves in the body’s systems through mixed-reality technology,” she wrote. “It’s a new realm of dynamic, collaborative education that helps students learn faster and retain more vital information. What’s remarkable is that you can all be in the same room, making eye contact as you explore the 3D body together, or engage virtually from anywhere in the world.”

Farrow said HoloAnatomy’s software has been on the market for three years and is now in use at more than 20 institutions worldwide. She said the company also recently released the HoloAnatomy Neuro Software Suite, an interactive 3D tool that uses mixed reality to visualize the brain and neural activity.

“AlensiaXR plans to enhance the HoloAnatomy Software Suite with additional anatomical content and develop new applications based on customer recommendations and our partners at Case Western Reserve University,” she wrote. “The response thus far has been remarkable, as academic institutions realize they can teach human anatomy without cadavers with our innovative mixed reality software.”

After years of developing and improving upon a new way to teach human anatomy with holographic imagery, Case Western Reserve University has announced the launch of a startup, AlensiaXR Inc., to scale its product learning platform, the HoloAnatomy Software Suite.​ ​HoloAnatomy, which uses mixed-reality technology to illuminate the human​ ​body in three dimensions through HoloLens, was developed by programmers​ ​and 3D artists at the Interactive Commons, along with CWRU anatomy​ ​faculty. More than 370 CWRU medical students already are using the​ ​technology.

The HoloAnatomy Software Suite also is licensed to a growing network of​ ​institutions, with more than 18 organizations using the platform to attract​ ​students, interest donors, save budgets and provide a more intuitive,​ ​engaging, effective educational experience.

One new startup, called AlensiaXR, was recently developed out of Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine. The university developed pioneering HoloAnatomy software that helps teach students about human anatomy, without the cadavers, by using holographic imagery. AlensiaXR aims to bring this mixed reality learning technique to students around the world.

Students in the XR medical labs learned just as well or better than in traditional dissection labs. The university also found that medical students learned twice as fast, allowing them to have extra time to incorporate different modalities, such as living anatomy and radiology. “That’s how we prepare our future doctors.”