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Virtual Pathology Lab transport students inside the body

Published in The Aggie on April 04, 2007

Imagine climbing through a coronary artery, with blood cells floating by as you examine connective tissues. While the technology is still in the developing stages and the body is not complete, students may get to virtually experience climbing through the inner workings of a heart, starting this fall.

Two years ago, the pathology lab at the UC Davis Medical Center enlisted the help of Mediaworks to create a virtual autopsy lab that uses gaming technology. The three-dimensional world offers students a more exciting way to visualize cellular activities through interactive and dynamic animations.

The lab will use the technology to teach pathology concepts, according to Dr. Regina Gandour-Edwards, director of surgical pathology, and engage medical students who grew up on video games.

The Virtual Autopsy Lab is equipped with the instruments and equipments of a typical lab, as well as a body. To explore the body, users have access to 12 instruments - each accompanied with brief descriptions or definitions - accessible with a click of the mouse. Users also have access to content panels, which provide all available information about a specific case study.

A "transporter" feature lets users enter a transport tube to do more exploring. The destination: a 3D model of a coronary artery.

"The lab is a tool to visualize 3D space, explore things and interact with them dynamically," said digital media specialist Bob Burnett. He said he hopes it helps students understand processes that are otherwise hard to visualize.

To bring the world of a coronary artery to life, designers turned to 3D technology. The original idea was to design a giant heart in the virtual world Second Life, but restrictions in that program prevented designers from importing new geometry into the 3D world.

So they turned to Maya, a three-dimensional animation and modeling application, and Unity, a game engine. Maya is used to create the geometry and animations of the lab and the artery, while Unity runs the computer simulation.

The autopsy lab is a prototype of the Visualization Module - a tool proposed for SmartSite, the new campus online course-management system set to launch this fall.

Mediaworks officials said they hope the lab will encourage faculty to experiment with the new SmartSite tools and provide a more enriching learning environment for students.

And as for the body? More body parts are in the works. Future projects include animations of a liver, a breast nodule for cancer studies and an egg undergoing cleavage for developmental biology.

The designers plan to complete the coronary artery model this summer

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