title: Anatomy and the access grid: exploiting plastinated brain sections for use in distributed medical education.
abstract: Computerized animation is becoming an increasingly popular method to provide dynamic presentation of anatomical concepts. However, most animations use artistic renderings as the base illustrations that are subsequently altered to depict movement. In most cases, the artistic rendering is a schematic that lacks realism. Plastinated sections provide a useful alternative to artistic renderings to serve as a base image for animation. The purpose of this study is to describe a method for developing animations by using plastinated sections. This application is used in Project TOUCH as a supplemental learning tool for a problem-based learning case distributed over the National Computational Science Alliance's Access Grid. The case involves traumatic head injury that results in an epidural hematoma with transtentorial uncal herniation. In addition, a subdural hematoma is animated permitting the student to contrast the two processes for a better understanding of dural hematomas, in general. The method outlined uses P40 plastinated coronal brain sections that are digitized and to which contiguous anatomical structures are rendered. The base illustration is rendered, interpolated, and viewed while audio narration describes the event. This method demonstrates how realistic anatomical animations can be generated quickly and inexpensively for medical education purposes by using plastinated brain sections.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anatomy and Reproductive Biology, University of Hawai'i School of Medicine, Honolulu 96822, USA. lozanoff@hawaii.edu
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lozanoff
authors.forename: Beth K
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Lozanoff
authors.forename: Mircea-Constantin
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Sora
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rosenheimer
authors.forename: Marcus F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Keep
authors.forename: Jonathon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tregear
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Saland
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jacobs
authors.forename: Stanley
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Saiki
authors.forename: Dale
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Alverson
mesh_terms: D019412:Anatomy, Cross-Sectional; D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D020375:Education, Distance / Q000379:methods*; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D018794:Problem-Based Learning