Dylan Henssen, radiologist/nuclear physician in training at the Imaging department at the Radboudumc, recently received a Comenius Teaching Fellowship. Dylan noticed that (bio)medical students often struggled to envision anatomical structures in 3D and to fathom the underlying relationships. An innovative application of mixed-reality helps students do just that.
Reason for this project
Students had trouble visualising anatomical structures. The use of scans in education on anatomy is time-consuming, passive, and often found boring by students. This causes students to have little motivation to understand it. Thus, together with Guido de Jong, Dylan developed an app that converts scans to 3D, for which they later received a proeftuin grant. Since then, the app has been in continuous development, with the students heavily involved.
Approach within the project
The app GreyMapp is currently being used in education in the dissecting room. This way, students can easily study and consult brain anatomy inside and outside the dissecting room at any time. The app is currently being prepared to use in other areas of anatomy. By using the app, students can find out for themselves which structures they find difficult. Students can share self-made models of structures with other students with the use of a drag-and-drop system.
These models can be viewed with the help of augmented and virtual reality and can also be printed on a 3D printer, for example. Using the app in combination with virtual reality can be done at the faculty, but during remote learning, students can also use the app at home with the use of augmented reality. The app can be implemented in the education of other study programmes, such as Technical Medicine, Psychology, and Artificial Intelligence.