Augmented Reality Anatomy

Anatomy is an essential discipline of medicine. To achieve successful diagnosis and treatment, the clinician must learn and understand basic anatomy and relevant spatial relationships. Portable knowledge of anatomy facilitates effective physical diagnosis and is critical for all specialists to remedy patient maladies and ensure holistic health. Recent innovations in technology have significantly facilitated anatomy instruction increasing the ability to learn and understand spatial morphological relationships and unprecedented efficacy. Central among these technologies is augmented reality (AR). We believe that there is a need for an anatomy textbook that provides fundamental information in a descriptive fashion utilizing AR technology enabling the student to effectively obtain anatomical information required to understand clinical intervention. We have written a guide that focuses on fundamental anatomical relationships presented in a concise fashion so that the most relevant information can be found rapidly and reliably. The material is presented within the context of AR-learning permitting the student to interact directly with anatomical structures utilizing AR-based hardware. Additionally, the presentation style enables the student to pursue topics sequentially or utilize the document as a reference guide enabling the identification of specific information in a non-sequential fashion. This guide requires access to AR device utilizing Unity as the corresponding platform. The student is directed to read the text with an iPad and use the embedded Sketchfab models to view the “flat” anatomical models. These structures are then identified on the AR-based system utilizing either zSpace or Microsoft HoloLens AR technologies. It is anticipated that students will make special effort to manipulate the AR models so that 3D anatomical relationships and features are appreciated and conceptualized. We are hopeful that this guide will provide a valuable reference for anatomical learning that is enjoyable to use while also serving to improve anatomical problem solving with a clinical context.