Holographic Virtual Anatomy Table

Project Summary/Abstract Medical students long ago gave up robbing graves for corpses, but students still need access to anatomy resources. While availability of traditional resources (e.g. cadavers, animals, etc.) is dwindling, emerging virtual alternatives are revolutionizing the practice of medicine. Interest in virtual aids derives from decades of success in aviation and the military. These industries-just as in healthcare-are hazardous and complex with very low tolerance for failure. Virtual environments have enabled training in these industries to become faster, safer, more measurable and more reproducible with computer-aided instruction. As a result, virtual 2D anatomy tables have recently appeared that display life-size anatomy across age, sex and body types. These tables use both synthesized models and real medical scans (e.g. CT, MRI, ultrasound) to generate dynamic visuals (changing tissue colors, pulsating arteries, etc.) that are not possible with cadavers. However, 2D renderings, or even seque