THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Doctors have traditionally learned anatomy by studying photographs and illustrations and by memorizing thousands of bits of information as they cut cadavers.
Now, virtual human bodies developed by a team of doctors and software engineers in Kerala are going to replace cadavers at the southern state’s medical colleges.
According to Dr. Dinesh Arora, the National Rural Health Mission (Kerala) director, a committee of doctors has evaluated the proposal and it has been found a viable substitute. The Anatomy Society of India (ASI) has already endorsed the use of virtual cadavers in studies. “The proposal has been submitted to the Medical Council of India (MCI) and soon this will be used in the medical colleges of the state, if all goes well,” he said.
The brainchild of Dr. Jerome Kalister, a medical graduate who took to animation and industrial design, the “3D Indiana” is a digital cadaver with every organ, bone, muscle, nerve and blood vessel, sculpted by 15 graduates from the Alappuzha Medical College.
The fully navigable, three-dimensional virtual human body will also help surgeons perform robotic surgery on the brain, heart and liver by pinpointing the precise location of a nerve or an organ part.
The authorities have asked Dr. Kalister in one of the state-run medical colleges on an experimental basis and at a very nominal cost. If the experiment is successful and if the MCI gives the nod, it would then be used in every medical college in the state.
The team has mapped out the entire human body during the three years of research in its true anatomical relations based on real time dissections, scans and textbooks in 500GB of visual data.
Researchers believe diseases can also be induced in the virtual body to try out new methods of treatment. Imaging techniques can also be used by doctors to explain precisely to patients what is wrong with their body or what will be done during surgery.
Under the traditional method of study, it is difficult to correlate the anatomical facts with information about how countless ailments afflict the body tissues being memorized. Under the new system, students can manipulate computers to depict the normal function of various body parts as well as to illustrate the effect of damage to the anatomy. You can also take printouts of the procedures.
They claim it is better than real cadavers, though they miss the feel of tissues. Moreover, cadavers are much in short supply in Kerala, especially for medical colleges in the private sector.
According to the creators of the “3D Indiana”, students, surgeons or even laymen can turn around the 3D-body, slice it from all directions and ‘enter and travel’ inside it to get three-dimensional images of everything inside the body. Students will be able to repeat the steps without destroying tissue.
They say “3D Indiana” is much more advanced than the ones used for teaching in foreign universities and the only thing it would lack is the “feel of a cadaver.” But the virtual body gives the surgeon views and access a cadaver cannot.
Since “3D Indiana” employs ‘volumetric anatomy’ to pinpoint an internal organ or a part, it is considered an ideal tool for robotic surgery. Volumetric analysis, which uses three intersecting axes, gives the exact position of a body part by mathematical calculation.
For instance, in the ear of the 3D body, surgeons can ‘isolate’ stapes, the smallest bone in the human body, and even stapedius, the smallest striated muscle measuring about one millimeter and view them from all directions.
Having finished the male “3D Indiana”, the group is now working on a similar female body. They have also applied for a patent. Many medical schools abroad are already experimenting with advanced computer-imaging techniques to create ‘electronic cadavers’ that the young medical students can ‘dissect’ rather than using real cadavers for their initial lessons.
