I Touched a Heart That Doesn’t Exist
My medical school experience with augmented reality anatomy
During one of my medical school interviews, I was told, “We will not be using cadavers for dissection.”
How can I become a doctor without ever seeing or holding an organ?
Filled with doubts and skepticism, I was introduced to the concept of learning anatomy through augmented reality. But it was an experience that changed my view of the world of medicine…
I was presented with a set of equipment called the HoloLens, a Microsoft product used for augmented reality visualization. For those who don’t know, augmented reality is a way to visualize and interact with computer-generated figures in the real world.
In medical school, it is used to create 3D anatomical figures that can be programmed into any format. I first saw the skeletal system, followed by the heart and then the digestive system. Every organ, intricate veins, and arteries were etched in perfect detail and made to be exact replicas of those in real life.
The experience was surreal, and frankly very hard to describe, because I was literally touching and moving objects that didn’t truly exist in the physical environment.
