Anatomy From Nazi Germany to Today.

This viewpoint reviews the anatomical body procurement used in Nazi Germany, notes the continued use of those images, and calls for disclosure of the biographical history of the people whose bodies and tissues are now studied.

Con la antorcha entre la niebla de la vía aérea única: marcha atópica y otros argumentos en la búsqueda de la evidencia / With the Torch in the Mist of the United Airway Disease: Atopic March and Other Arguments in the Search for Evidence

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[Translated article] With the Torch in the Mist of the United Airway Disease: Atopic March and Other Arguments in the Search for Evidence / Con la antorcha entre la niebla de la vía aérea única: marcha atópica y otros argumentos en la búsqueda de la evidencia

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Virtual Anatomy Museum: Facilitating Public Engagement Through an Interactive Application.

Digitisation has become a common practice in the preservation of museum collections. Recent development of photogrammetry techniques allows for more accessible acquisition of three-dimensional (3D) models that serve as accurate representations of their originals. One of the potential applications of this is presenting digital collections as virtual museums to engage the public. Medical museums, particularly, would benefit from digitisation of their collections as many of them are closed to the public.The aim of this project was to design and create an interactive virtual museum which would represent the Anatomy Museum at the University of Glasgow with key specimens digitised using photogrammetry techniques. Members of the general public (25 participants) were asked to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of the interactive application by completing questionnaires.A process to digitise anatomical specimens using photogrammetry and convert them into game-ready 3D models was developed. The results demonstrated successful generation of 3D models of specimens preserved using different techniques, including specimens preserved in fluid and glass jars. User tests and evaluation of the application by members of the general public were positive, with participants agreeing that they would now consider visiting the real museum after using the virtual version.

Cadaverless anatomy: Darkness in the times of pandemic Covid-19.

The pandemic Covid-19 is responsible for a major education crisis globally and has a drastic impact on medical training as well. The objective of the present study was to envision the present and future impact of Covid-19 on anatomy learning and research. The virtual education is the only mode of teaching in current scenario. Every anatomist is unlocking technology to deliver best education however understanding of the subject without dissections or other practical teaching aids like bones, specimens, embryology models, microscopic slides etc. is challenging. This approach misses the feel and human visual impacts. Potential educational disruption is felt currently and will be experienced even after the pandemic is over due to scarcity of cadavers. As the body donor may be carrier or died of Covid-19 and there is no proven screening to rule out this infection in donor, so the acceptance of body donations is not advisable for the safety of medical students and health care workers. To conclude, anatomy education is cadaverless currently due to Covid-19 lockdown and it is prophesied that after the pandemic, real cadavers will be replaced by virtual cadavers because of paucity of cadavers. Research in the field of anatomy will also be adversely affected.

Supporting early career anatomists: An international challenge.

INTRODUCTION: The formative years in academia are difficult for early career academics as they transition into their new roles in teaching and research. Ubiquitous changes in health sciences education have compounded this transition for early career anatomists (ECA), who must balance curriculum transformations, research imperatives and administrative responsibilities as they navigate their transition. Support for ECAs is thus important in order to provide a strong pipeline of anatomists for the future of the discipline and its foundational role in the health sciences. Thus, this study investigated the needs of international ECAs with respect to teaching, research and career/professional development in the anatomical sciences. METHOD: The authors distributed an online survey in 2018 to ECAs of member associations of the International Federation of Association of Anatomists (IFAA). The survey contained both closed and open-ended response questions. Data gathered included ECAs level of academic appointment, training for teaching and nature of support that ECAs may find valuable for their development as anatomists. Frequencies and 95% confidence intervals were calculated and answers to open-response questions were analysed qualitatively. RESULTS: Over 590 respondents from across the globe answered the survey. Requests for training in the clinical relevance and application of anatomical sub-disciplines were frequent. Importantly, support to establish collaborations, mentorship relationships and professional networks were repeatedly requested. CONCLUSION: In this first ever international survey of ECAs, the needs expressed by respondents indicate the importance of academic and professional development support at both local and global levels. Partnerships between the IFAA, institutions, anatomical and educational associations should create training and mentoring opportunities to smooth the transition into academia for these young academics, which would ensure the future of the discipline and its role in the health sciences.

National Survey on Canadian Undergraduate Medical Programs: The Decline of the Anatomical Sciences in Canadian Medical Education.

The anatomical sciences have always been regarded as an essential component of medical education. In Canada, the methodology and time dedicated to anatomy teaching are currently unknown. Two surveys were administered to course directors and discipline leaders to gain a comprehensive view of anatomical education in Canadian medical schools. Participants were queried about contact hours (classroom and laboratory), content delivery and assessment methods for gross anatomy, histology, and embryology. Twelve schools responded to both surveys, for an overall response rate of 64%. Overall, Canadian medical students spend 92.8 (± 45.4) hours (mean ± SD) studying gross anatomy, 25.2 (± 21.0) hours for histology, and 7.4 (± 4.3) hours for embryology. Gross anatomy contact hours statistically significantly exceeded those for histology and embryology. Results show that most content is delivered in the first year of medical school, as anatomy is a foundational building block for upper-year courses. Laboratory contact time for gross anatomy was 56.8 (± 30.7) hours, histology was 11.4 (± 16.2) hours, and embryology was 0.25 (± 0.6) hours. Additionally, 42% of programs predominantly used instructor/technician-made prosections, another 33% used a mix of dissection and prosections and 25% have their students complete cadaveric dissections. Teaching is either completely or partially integrated into all Canadian medical curricula. This integration trend in Canada parallels those of other medical schools around the world where programs have begun to decrease contact time in anatomy and increase integration of the anatomical sciences into other courses. Compared to published American data, Canadian schools offer less contact time. The reason for this gap is unknown. Further investigation is required to determine if the amount of anatomical science education within medical school affects students' performance in clerkship, residency and beyond.

Survey of Gross Anatomy Education in China: The Past and the Present.

Medical education in mainland China has undergone massive expansion and reforms in the past decades. A nation-wide survey of the five-year clinical medicine programs aimed to examine the course hours, pedagogies, learning resources and teaching staff of anatomy both at present and over the past three decades (1990-1999, 2000-2009, and 2010-2018). The directors or senior teachers from 90 out of the 130 five-year clinical medicine programs were invited to fill out a factual questionnaire by email. Ultimately, sixty-five completed questionnaires were received from 65 different schools. It was found that the total number of gross anatomy course hours has decreased by 11% in the past 30 years and that systematic and regional anatomy have been increasingly taught separately among the surveyed medical schools. Problem-based learning has been adopted in thirty-five (54%) of the surveyed schools, and team-based learning is used in ten (15%) of the surveyed schools. The surveyed schools reported receiving more donated cadavers in recent years, with the average number increasing from 20.67 ± 20.29 in 2000-2009 to 36.10 ± 47.26 in 2010-2018. However, this has not resulted in a decrease in the number of students who needed to share one cadaver (11.85 ± 5.03 in 1990-1999 to 14.22 ± 5.0 in 2010-2018). A decreasing trend regarding the teacher-student ratio (1:25.5 in 2000-2009 to 1:33.2 in 2010-2018) was also reported. The survey demonstrated the historical changes in gross anatomy education in China over the past thirty years.

Applying Geometric Morphometrics to Digital Reconstruction and Anatomical Investigation.

Virtual imaging, image manipulation and morphometric methods are increasingly used in medicine and the natural sciences. Virtual imaging hardware and image manipulation software allows us to readily visualise, explore, alter, repair and study digital objects. This suite of equipment and tools combined with statistical tools for the study of form variation and covariation using Procrustes based analyses of landmark coordinates, geometric morphometrics, makes possible a wide range of studies of human variation pertinent to biomedicine. These tools for imaging, quantifying and analysing form have already led to new insights into organismal growth, development and evolution and offer exciting prospects in future biomedical applications. This chapter presents a review of commonly used methods for digital acquisition, extraction and landmarking of anatomical structures and of the common geometric morphometric statistical methods applied to investigate them: generalised Procrustes analysis to derive shape variables, principal component analysis to examine patterns of variation, multivariate regression to examine how form is influenced by meaningful factors and partial least squares analysis to examine associations among structures or between these and other interesting variables. An example study of human facial and maxillary sinus ontogeny illustrates these approaches.

Three-Dimensional Visualisation of Skeletal Cavities.

Bones contain spaces within them. The extraction and the analysis of those cavities are crucial in the study of bone tissue function and can inform about pathologies or past traumatic events. The use of medical imaging techniques allows a non-invasive visualisation of skeletal cavities opening a new frontier in medical inspection and diagnosis. Here, we report the application of a new mesh-based approach for the isolation of skeletal cavities of different size and geometrical structure. We apply a mesh-based approach to extract (i) the main virtual cavities inside the human skull, (ii) a complete human endocast, (iii) the inner vasculature of the malleus bone and (iv) the medullary of a human femur. The detailed description of the mesh-based isolation method and its pioneristic application to four different case-studies show the potential of this approach in medical visualisation.

The Use of Ultrasound in Educational Settings: What Should We Consider When Implementing this Technique for Visualisation of Anatomical Structures?

Ultrasound is a well-established medical imaging technique with pioneering work conducted by Professor Ian Donald and his colleagues at the University of Glasgow, from the mid-1950s onwards, in terms of introducing it as a diagnostic tool in the field of obstetrics and gynaecology. Since then, ultrasound has been extensively used in clinical and research settings. There are few imaging techniques that have undergone such a fast and thriving evolution since their development. Nowadays, diagnostic ultrasound benefits from two-dimensional (2D), three-dimensional (3D), four-dimensional (4D), and a variety of Doppler modes with technologically advanced transducers (probes) producing images of high anatomical fidelity. In the future, there may even be a place for ultrasound in molecular imaging allowing for visualisation at the microscale. Ultrasound is characterised by real-time non-invasive scanning, relative ease of administration, and lack of ionising radiation. All of these features, make ultrasound an appealing option in educational settings for learning topographic anatomy and potentially enhancing future clinical practice for vocational learners. Sophisticated, but relatively inexpensive, portable handheld devices have also contributed to point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) becoming the norm for bedside and pre-hospital scanning. It has been argued that ultrasound will become the next stethoscope for healthcare professionals. For this to become a reality, however, training is required on increasing familiarity with knobology, correct use of the machine and transducers, and accurate interpretation of anatomy followed by identification of pathologies. The above require incorporation of ultrasound teaching in undergraduate curricula, outwith the realm of opportunistic bedside learning, accompanied by consideration of ethical topics such as the management of incidental findings and careful evaluation of its pedagogical impact cross-sectionally and longitudinally.

Towards Advanced Interactive Visualization for Virtual Atlases.

An atlas is generally defined as a bound collection of tables, charts or illustrations describing a phenomenon. In an anatomical atlas for example, a collection of representative illustrations and text describes anatomy for the purpose of communicating anatomical knowledge. The atlas serves as reference frame for comparing and integrating data from different sources by spatially or semantically relating collections of drawings, imaging data, and/or text. In the field of medical image processing, atlas information is often constructed from a collection of regions of interest, which are based on medical images that are annotated by domain experts. Such an atlas may be employed, for example, for automatic segmentation of medical imaging data. The combination of interactive visualization techniques with atlas information opens up new possibilities for content creation, curation, and navigation in virtual atlases. With interactive visualization of atlas information, students are able to inspect and explore anatomical atlases in ways that were not possible with the traditional method of presenting anatomical atlases in book format, such as viewing the illustrations from other viewpoints. With advanced interaction techniques, it becomes possible to query the data that forms the basis for the atlas, thus empowering researchers to access a wealth of information in new ways. So far, atlas-based visualization has been employed mainly for medical education, as well as biological research. In this survey, we provide an overview of current digital biomedical atlas tasks and applications and summarize relevant visualization techniques. We discuss recent approaches for providing next-generation visual interfaces to navigate atlas data that go beyond common text-based search and hierarchical lists. Finally, we reflect on open challenges and opportunities for the next steps in interactive atlas visualization.

A brief review of recent discoveries in human anatomy.

In the last few years, a cluster of anatomical discoveries has been reported which overturned the long existing dogmas about the structure and function of human body. First to come was the discovery that established the existence of a lymphatic system pertaining to the central nervous system (CNS). CNS was believed to be anatomically immune privileged owing to the absence of any lymphatics and presence of the blood-brain barrier around it, but latest research has established beyond any reasonable doubt that true lymphatic channels carry immune cells in meninges thus challenging the existing theory. Studies also supported the presence of a 'Glymphatic system' (created by the perivascular spaces lined with the leptomeninges and a sheath of glial cells) in the CNS draining interstitial metabolic waste from CNS. The second discovery unraveled the previously unknown parts of the human mesentery in adult and established that it is a continuous entity all along the intra-abdominal gut tube against the previous notion that it is fragmented in the adult humans. A very recently reported third discovery demonstrated a previously unknown tissue component-'interstitium'-a networked collagen bound fluid-filled space existent in a number of human organs. All these structures bear considerable applied importance towards the pathogenesis, prognostic and diagnostic investigations and management of human diseases. This article attempts to present a brief review of all three remarkable discoveries and emphasizes their applied importance within the realm of medical sciences.

A plea for an extension of the anatomical nomenclature: Organ systems.

This article is the third part of a series aimed at correcting and extending the anatomical nomenclature. Communication in clinical medicine as well as in medical education is extensively composed of anatomical, histological, and embryological terms. Thus, to avoid any confusion, it is essential to have a concise, exact, perfect and correct anatomical nomenclature. The Terminologia Anatomica (TA) was published 20 years ago and during this period several revisions have been made. Nevertheless, some important anatomical structures are still not included in the nomenclature. Here we list a collection of 156 defined and explained technical terms related to the anatomical structures of the human body focusing on the digestive, respiratory, urinary and genital systems. These terms are set for discussion to be added into the new version of the TA.

Ultra-violet body painting: A new tool in the spectrum of anatomy education

This descriptive article explores the use of ultraviolet (UV) body painting within anatomy education. Whilst the use of body painting is not new, UV paint has not previously been used within medical education. It is well documented that body painting is a fun and engaging learning tool that, it is reported, uses multiple sensory pathways to promote retention of knowledge. That being said, it is not without its limitations, namely that it rubs off easily and cannot be layered to show superficial and deep views simultaneously - something that UV paint can achieve. This article compares the use of normal and ultra-violet body painting within the classroom environment. In addition to offering exemplars for best practice and maximum impact, the article offers practical guidance on the health and safety issues related to the use of the paint and associated UV lighting. UV paint provides a wet and therefore more visceral look to paintings. The fluorescent colour makes it extremely striking visually. One of the major advantages is that UV paint can be layered both on top of and beneath ordinary body paint. Thus when light is applied a hidden layer can be revealed. Use of an adhesive, such as liquid latex, underneath the paint ensures that the artwork lasts and withstands sweating and movement, as well as enabling an artefact to be produced if removed carefully from the body. UV paint therefore makes an excellent addition to the toolkit of any anatomy educator

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Another new organ! is this a golden age of discovery in anatomy?

Twice in fifteen months the popular press has published reports of the discovery of a new human organ. The claims that the mesentery and interstitium are organs come from medical practitioners, not from anatomical scientists. Although both of these anatomical entities are important in the functioning of the body, neither satisfies the requirements that an organ be composed of two or more tissues and perform a special function. Also missing in the recent claim that the interstitium, that is, connective tissues with fluid-filled spaces, is an organ, is a statement to that effect in the original research report. Alas, it appears to be much ado about nothing. Clin. Anat. 31:648-649, 2018. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Pelvis Anatomy Tutorial Using Radiological Images.

Introduction: Improving integration between basic science and clinical application is essential in medical education. Anatomy courses can do this by focusing on medical imaging interpretation. Most imaging textbooks rely on structural identification, which novice learners often struggle to apply to the health care environment, particularly in complex regions like the pelvis, which is multifaceted and differs substantially between sexes. To address this deficit, this resource extends our imaging-based tutorial series. Methods: This tutorial was a self-administered PowerPoint incorporating X-ray, computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging, which are all often used for the pelvic region, as well as self-quizzing and clinical applications. Using repeated-measures, control/experimental design, the tutorial was evaluated as a review tool for 57 Australian medical students in preclerkship years. Participants were evaluated by a rating self-efficacy scale, knowledge-based testing (multiple-choice, short-answer, and identification questions), and feedback to open-ended questions. Results: Results indicate that the tutorial significantly improved direct knowledge (p = .006), as the experimental group's posttutorial scores for direct questions were superior by 21% on average. Significant improvements occurred specifically for direct short-answer and indirect image-identification questions. Discussion: These results suggest the tutorial is an effective review tool. While previous tutorials were evaluated as adjunct tools, this tutorial was evaluated post-anatomy teaching with similar results. Students improved in direct and applied anatomy following tutorial exposure. This suggests that the tutorial series comprises valuable review and supplementary materials. None of our tutorials have been evaluated as a sole mechanism for teaching anatomy or imaging.

National survey on anatomical sciences in medical education.

The drivers for curricular change in medical education such as the addition of innovative approaches to teaching, inclusion of technology and adoption of different assessment methods are gaining momentum. In an effort to understand how these changes are impacting and being implemented in gross anatomy, microscopic anatomy, neuroanatomy/neuroscience, and embryology courses, surveys were sent out to course directors/discipline leaders at allopathic Medical Schools in the United States during the 2016-2017 academic year. Participants in the study were asked to comment on course hours, student experiences in the classroom and laboratory, amount of faculty participation, the use of peers as teachers in both the classroom and laboratory, methods used for student assessment and identification of best practices. Compared to data published from a similar survey in 2014, a number of changes were identified: (1) classroom hours in gross anatomy increased by 24% and by 29% in neuroanatomy/neuroscience; (2) laboratory hours in gross anatomy decreased by 16%, by 33% in microscopic anatomy, and by 38% in neuroanatomy/neuroscience; (3) use of virtual microscopy in microscopic anatomy teaching increased by 129%; and (4) the number of respondents reporting their discipline as part of a partially or fully integrated curriculum increased by greater than 100% for all four disciplines. Anat Sci Educ 11: 7-14. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.