Skip to main content

Future doctors learn human anatomy using virtual reality simulations

Virtual Reality in the Anatomy Lab
For centuries, the practice of dissecting cadavers is how future doctors have learned about the anatomy of the human body. Medical students at the University of California San Francisco, however, are using virtual reality training as an optional component in their first-year curriculum, allowing them to explore the human body before ever setting foot in an actual lab.

Knowledge of anatomy is the foundation of all medical knowledge, and VR lets med students get a more complete understanding of the complex structures that make up our bodies.

Related Videos

Assistant Professor of Anatomy Derek Harmon, PhD, told Science Blog that he thinks it’s an important addition to the school’s curriculum. “Virtual reality is exciting for me as an anatomy instructor because it is going to help enhance the students’ understanding of the arrangement of the body,” he said. “Because the better they know the body, the better physicians they will end up being for the rest of their careers.”

Textbooks and actual dissections of cadavers are useful, but VR adds a whole new dimension to the instruction. Students can remove each layer individually, from the skin all the way down to bones. The VR interface allows them to better understand the interaction between muscles, organs, nerves, and blood vessels. “It’s a learning experience almost like putting a puzzle together,” Harmon said.

The VR simulation learning is part of UCSF’s Bridges Curriculum, a revolutionary new program at the School of Medicine that emphasizes new ways of looking at the interconnected nature of health care.

Surgeons have already broadcast actual operations in VR, and some can even prep for upcoming procedures by practicing every step in VR before they even enter operating room.

Kimberly Topp, a PhD and Professor of Physical Therapy and Anatomy at UCSF, says there are many more real-world medical experiences that VR can simulate, such as what a doctor might encounter in an emergency room. “It is hard to simulate a realistic trauma experience where nobody is going to get hurt,” she said. “This is a great way to get students more comfortable with the actual clinical environment that they are headed into.”

“People are really wowed when using virtual reality. That is how I think it is going to help students remember the anatomy that is so dense in their education,” she added.

On the other hand, for the rest of us who may not be up for the rigors of medical school, we can always buckle on an Oculus Rift headset and give Surgeon Simulator a try.

Editors' Recommendations

Scientists want to implant mini human brains in animals
researchers create quad core computer from four rat brains lab

It sounds like something out of a 1980s horror movie, but medical researchers are now able to transplant human "mini-brains," also known as brain organoids, into animals like rats. As gruesome as it may sound to implant human brain tissue into animals, this research provides a way to safely research diseases and health problems we struggle to understand, including genetic disorders that affect the brain.

Recently, a new paper called for the creation of a framework that researchers can use to make ethical decisions about brain organoids. Digital Trends spoke to Dr. Isaac Chen, lead author of the paper and an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Penn Medicine, about the ethical issues involved in this research, as well as its potential benefits.
Growing organoids
The process begins with taking a sample of stem cells from a human. These pluripotent stem cells have the potential to develop into other types of cells, such as neurons, as required within the body, and the scientists use this natural pathway of development to grow the organoid. The cells are grown as a colony, and they naturally ball up into a group to create a small organoid, about the size of a pea.

Read more
How doctors are fighting Alzheimer’s with a cleverly designed VR game
sea quest hero dementia research

In 2016, Sea Hero Quest released on mobile with the intention of gathering data to help understand and diagnose dementia. Three years and a jump to VR later, a paper from PNAS — or the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — has confirmed that the game has fulfilled its purpose. Sea Hero Quest has provided an enormous dataset that can be studied and utilized to understand, diagnose, and detect the early onset of dementia for years to come.

Developed by British studio Gliitchers with the help of Deutsche Telekom and Alzheimer's Research UK, the experimental project's success is a groundbreaking moment for research in this field, and serves as a model that can be used in other areas, too.

Read more
Custom 3D-printed heads let doctors practice delicate brain procedures
rtsafe

Radiotherapy can be a game-changer for treating brain cancer, with high doses of precisely targeted radiation used to kill off dangerous cancer cells, while avoiding damage to surrounding areas. The key word, however, is “precise,” since missing a target even by a few millimeters could damage healthy brain tissue with major health implications that threaten everything from disrupted speech to paralysis.

The radiotherapists who perform these procedures therefore have to be incredibly skilled and highly trained. But that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t benefit from being able to practice eliminating brain tumors in patients before going ahead and carrying out an operation.

Read more