that runs on the Oculus Rift headset. The software is free and open to anyone who wants to use it, and so far, Axelrod says, 35 schools and medical centers around the U.S. and beyond are using it for education. Once a user puts on the Oculus Rift, they can use hand-held controls to rotate and zoom in on the virtual heart, allowing cardiologists to better understand abnormalities associated with various heart conditions that are difficult to see up close in a living patient.
Doctors often have to assess their patients’ three-dimensional bodies through two-dimensional images like X-rays and scans. Virtual anatomy programs can help them learn how to bridge that gap. Kendall says that with HoloAnatomy, an X-ray can be virtually juxtaposed with the “living” hologram body, which helps students better understand what they are actually looking at during the notoriously difficult process of interpreting an X-ray.
Incorporating new methods of education for foundational subjects like anatomy can save time as the amount of knowledge the students need to learn grows, says, the executive director of Interactive Commons at Case Western Reserve: “If we can learn [anatomy] faster, maybe our students can spend some more time learning the rapidly changing medical concepts they need to know.”
Despite all of these technological benefits, anatomy educators say there is no need to leave the practice of cadaver dissection completely in the past, even considering the wrench COVID-19 throws into their plans. Most instructors call the virtual or mixed reality experiences a supplement to in-person education.
Yet opponents of virtual-only dissection are not simply traditionalists stuck in the past. “Cadaveric dissection is a very active and exploratory learning experience,” says, an anatomical sciences professor at Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine in Michigan, adding that she and other educators do not want to replace that with an online or virtual-only experience.