Delivering the Future of Dental Education

Students learning anatomy by looking at a hologram sounds like something from a university in the far future. But that’s how it’s done right now at Case Western Reserve University.

When CWRU developed the 3D HoloAnatomy® Software Suite of medical education software several years ago to teach anatomy without the use of cadavers, it soon learned there was an appetite for this technological advancement at universities around the world. But universities are not as nimble as business startups. So CWRU created the company AlensiaXR to market its HoloAnatomy software. “(Universities) are built to teach and learn,” said AlensiaXR CEO Mark Day. “You need a private sector organization to be able to (advance a new technology) as a business.”

In the future, AlensiaXR plans to expand the HoloAnatomy software to other medical academic subjects, such as physiology.

A glimpse of the future of education.

Using HoloLens, CWRU’s Interactive Commons developed HoloAnatomy Software Suite​… ​A​nd results were promising.​ ​In a study published in Medical Science Educator in November 2019, students were shown to grasp concepts twice as fast using HoloAnatomy as they would with 2D models.

“We took one of the oldest classes that you can imagine, human anatomy, and in a period of about five years, we went from hundreds of years of history to teaching in this new way,” Griswold says.

In the time since, 17 schools, including one as far as Poland as well as the United Kingdom’s esteemed Oxford University, have adopted curriculums featuring the HoloAnatomy Software Suite.

“We’ve been given this opportunity to lead the world in this area. As a region, we can adopt this as our future,” Griswold says. “We should be amazingly proud as a city.”

The HoloAnatomy platform can visualize complex anatomical structures and systems, allowing students to freely move in and out of holograms for more collaborative anatomy lessons.

“You simply put on a HoloLens headset, and a human body appears in three dimensions — the anchored hologram is like magic, empowering students and teachers to literally immerse themselves in the body’s systems through mixed-reality technology,” she wrote. “It’s a new realm of dynamic, collaborative education that helps students learn faster and retain more vital information. What’s remarkable is that you can all be in the same room, making eye contact as you explore the 3D body together, or engage virtually from anywhere in the world.”

Farrow said HoloAnatomy’s software has been on the market for three years and is now in use at more than 20 institutions worldwide. She said the company also recently released the HoloAnatomy Neuro Software Suite, an interactive 3D tool that uses mixed reality to visualize the brain and neural activity.

“AlensiaXR plans to enhance the HoloAnatomy Software Suite with additional anatomical content and develop new applications based on customer recommendations and our partners at Case Western Reserve University,” she wrote. “The response thus far has been remarkable, as academic institutions realize they can teach human anatomy without cadavers with our innovative mixed reality software.”

After years of developing and improving upon a new way to teach human anatomy with holographic imagery, Case Western Reserve University has announced the launch of a startup, AlensiaXR Inc., to scale its product learning platform, the HoloAnatomy Software Suite.​ ​HoloAnatomy, which uses mixed-reality technology to illuminate the human​ ​body in three dimensions through HoloLens, was developed by programmers​ ​and 3D artists at the Interactive Commons, along with CWRU anatomy​ ​faculty. More than 370 CWRU medical students already are using the​ ​technology.

The HoloAnatomy Software Suite also is licensed to a growing network of​ ​institutions, with more than 18 organizations using the platform to attract​ ​students, interest donors, save budgets and provide a more intuitive,​ ​engaging, effective educational experience.

One new startup, called AlensiaXR, was recently developed out of Case Western Reserve University's School of Medicine. The university developed pioneering HoloAnatomy software that helps teach students about human anatomy, without the cadavers, by using holographic imagery. AlensiaXR aims to bring this mixed reality learning technique to students around the world.

Students in the XR medical labs learned just as well or better than in traditional dissection labs. The university also found that medical students learned twice as fast, allowing them to have extra time to incorporate different modalities, such as living anatomy and radiology. “That’s how we prepare our future doctors.”

Virtual learning is democratizing what has been an elite understanding of the human body.

“My intention is to really take this to any class. This is a way online learning or remote learning should really happen. We want them interacting.”

   —Case Western Reserve University CIO Sue Workman

The Revolution Won’t Be Televised, It Will Be Programmed in Mixed Reality

“By making medical education more interactive and engaging, the medical field could become more accessible and attractive to those who previously might have been put off by traditional medical learning.”

In 2014 radiology professor Mark Griswold was looking for a new way to teach anatomy. Running a cadaver lab can be expensive, and corpses offer surprisingly limited views into the body. In the midst of his search, he was invited to Microsoft’s top secret testing facility. He expected to be shown a virtual reality headset, a potentially useful tool for teaching. Instead, technicians outfitted him with something even more groundbreaking: a mixed reality headset, called HoloLens, the first self-contained computer that allows users to see holograms amid their surroundings.

The experience was so overwhelming that he had to sit down: “I immediately knew my world had changed that day.” The headset, he realized, would be invaluable in the classroom.

Griswold and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic set out to design a program for HoloLens that would revolutionize anatomy lessons. Last year they released HoloAnatomy, a demonstration application that transforms images into 3-D models of the human body’s bones and organs and enables students to explore their shape and movement from every angle.

Virtual reality immerses users into an alternate world, removed from their surroundings. HoloLens is different: “Physical and holographic objects coexist and interact in real time,” says Microsoft’s Lorraine Bardeen. In classrooms this means students can communicate with teachers, peers, and a holographic display during a lesson.

 “I don’t see a class on campus that won’t be affected by the technology,” says Griswold.

Put on the HoloLens visor… and you’ll find yourself staring at a life-size, 3D human figure, with every vein and artery in perfect bodily placement and scale. You can walk around this anatomically correct scaffold, spying organs and tissues from any angle, and poke your head in to see the interior of, say, a heart. Within, you’ll see that organ’s distinct chambers—and within those, the discrete valves.

What is most striking is that this body seems to take up real physical space. Everyone who dons the goggles sees the same images, making medical instruction easier—and the fact that you experience the real world along with the virtual one makes conversation and consultation easier, too.

The idea is to teach students anatomy in a way that they absorb the knowledge more readily, more intuitively—and more quickly. Seeing and “touching” intertwined veins and arteries as they navigate through the human form gives you an understanding of circulation that is difficult (or maybe impossible) to get by studying even the most finely etched schematic in a textbook.