Teaching mental reconstruction of anatomy from 2-dimensional cross-sections is a difficult task. The student is given much information and struggles to comprehend the relationship between the two dimensions of scanned imagery and the 3-dimensions of anatomy. Unless these students are going on to specialize in Radiology, these skills are rarely used in practice. What would be more appropriate is a top-down approach where students are taught to gain the overview in three-dimensions and then to target specific areas of anatomy/pathology where the detail in a slice is needed, and the relationship between them is apparent. Advances in holographic film based hard opy and corresponding computer based visualization techniques now make this approach to teaching anatomy not only possible, but desirable.

Scanned tomographic datasets can be used to augment gross anatomy courses both inside the lab, and outside sing holographic displays and web/CD based viewers. Pathologic anatomical teaching cases can be stored and disseminated via holographic film or digitally via the web. Indeed the holographic view of anatomy, and the corresponding computer based visualization tools, may create distance learning possibilities and remove the need for cadaver based teaching altogether.

This presentation will discuss the technology behind holographic based display of scanned data and the corresponding computer based visualization tools. The tradeoffs between various display technologies used in anatomical teaching courses will be presented and examples shown.