‘It’s vital to practise before you go near a patient’: the tech bringing anatomy teaching to life for medical students

From finding cancer tumours to monitoring the health of unborn babies, medical imaging is an integral part of modern healthcare. But it’s also key to both teaching the healthcare professionals of the future and driving forward research to improve all aspects of patient care. And today’s tech means that universities can harness the power of imaging like never before.

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But it has to be the right tech, says Tom Lovelock, Faculty of Health ICT services manager at Keele University. “It’s not about just handing out an augmented reality headset to everyone in the room. It’s about making the technology usable day-to-day. Give a group of surgeons the ability to collectively view a 3D model of a CT scan through an AR headset, and they can communicate and understand a complex problem faster. And that’s going to benefit the patient.”

At Keele University’s Anatomy facility in the School of Medicine, capturing and storing medical images is an integral part of teaching and learning. In this department, medical students learn about the human body through dissection of those who have chosen to leave their bodies to medical science. Surgeons also use the facility to research and develop new surgical procedures, or train new surgeons on different procedures. “It’s vital to practise and simulate a process as many times as possible before you go near a living patient,” says Lovelock. “Our donors are treated with the utmost respect: students are encouraged to look upon these donors as their first patient.”

Along with donating their bodies, some donors also give prior permission to preserve specimens digitally for anonymous use in medical education. Medical specimens degrade over time, so there are considerable advantages in using a digital image, and these images are also used to teach healthcare professionals who might not be carrying out actual dissections: nurses, for example. For example, if students are studying the chest wall, their lecturer could use a time-lapse video of a chest dissection to show the surrounding anatomy or a particular detail. Images are also used to enable students to plan surgical procedures and to teach dissection of different areas by using time-lapse photography for specific areas.

It’s vital to have the right equipment to capture these images of the human body. Portability and size are key, says Lovelock. His team needs to be able to quickly move a workstation around the anatomy lab, where space is at a premium, going to the specimens rather than having to get the specimens to the workstation. The Lenovo ThinkPad P Series is small, powerful and easy to move, enabling Lovelock’s team to process images and videos inside the lab, edit rapidly and share them securely. “You need much more than a standard off-the-shelf laptop to do that,” he says.

The ThinkPad also enables the creation of time-lapse videos to provide context around images. “You need a lot of processing power to distil 50 hours of dissection, captured at the highest resolution possible, down to a few minutes of time-lapse,” says Lovelock. “A single image is incredibly valuable, but it doesn’t show you the process. Visual communication is so important for this kind of teaching. We recently created a time-lapse video of a back dissection, all the way down the spinal cord. Obviously, there’s an enormous amount of muscle and tissue being removed in that process that are of great interest to physiotherapy students, for example. The time-lapse enables us to take them through that process, layer by layer.”

Using tech to teach medical students also helps to familiarise them with kit they may well be using far more in the future, Lovelock points out – and helps them realise just what can be achieved. “The core of what our students learn has been around as long as humans have been aware of their own anatomy, and there is still enormous value in the visceral, tactile experience of dissection. But we also want to give our students the knowledge and the confidence around new technology. When I started in this area, 3D printing of medical implants was a relatively new process. This year, I had a conversation with a student who was about to have a 3D implant in their knee.”

Lovelock says he’s excited about the future of tech at Keele. The university is about to start a new project using augmented reality, looking at how data from a patient’s CT scan might be laid over a doctor’s view using a headset, so the medical professional examining wouldn’t need to switch between looking at the scan and looking at the patient, enabling faster, more precise anatomical orientation. Then there’s creating 3D models of surgical procedures, overlaid with traditional imagery, to give surgeons a better idea of the orientation and spaces that are involved.

“And I know there will be a lot more advances in the future,” he says. “This kind of technology – no wires, easy to move, easy to use – is very freeing. I’m constantly amazed at the improvements that are taking place right now.”