It could be considered an out-of-body educational experience for the University of Charleston's student body.
Propelled through a partnership with Colorado-based Perspectus Inc. formed earlier this year, UC has introduced a dedicated Virtual Reality education laboratory on its campus, to redefine -- and revolutionize -- students' grasp and understanding of human anatomy, physiology and radiology in their courses and the careers they may pursue thereafter.
Specifically, UC students will soon be able to don sophisticated, goggled headsets and examine anatomy through 3D techniques in the VR Education Laboratory. The 3D technology enables its users to upload, volumize and manipulate anatomical structures, view them from various angles and enlarge and in other ways "tweak" them. Through the images provided by the technology, layers of muscle, blood vessels and bones can be added, removed, marked and shaded to distinguish their interconnected parts.
Construction of UC's grant-funded VR lab was completed in August, with a soft launch undertaken earlier this fall. The laboratory includes 30, high-powered computers with high-resolution headsets to access the Perspectus VR technology.
By spring, the lab will be used by UC Biology, Radiologic Science, Nursing, and Physician Assistant programs, among others.
Exploring 'The Body Box'
In the nascent VR Education Lab in UC's Clay Tower on Nov. 28, Associate Professor of Biology Dr. Dawn Turner demonstrated some of the system's capabilities and discussed its future uses.
"The students are helping us troubleshoot some things to get it up and fully functional; there are a lot of technical issues with everything," Turner explained. Students practice with the equipment for roughly a half-hour at a time, to acclimate their senses -- and sensibilities -- to the virtual environment.
"It's not so much, at this point, for teaching. Our goal is that we will actually conduct lectures, classes and potential assignments and assessments ultimately in that lab, once it's fully operational," Turner said.
Turner teaches undergraduate biology and physiology courses. "The route I'm using it is to teach basic anatomy. The part I use is referred to in the software as 'The Body Box.' It's an electronic sort of cadaver. It's not fully realistic, but you can adjust colors and things like that. You can isolate systems; I can have the whole body, head to toe, and look just at the bones. It has the capabilities where you can hover the controller over a bone, and it will tell you the name of the bone, for instance.
"That's what we've been using it for at this point. Students can explore, take bones apart, turn them around, get all three dimensions of them. You can do that with pretty much every system, with the exception of the skin -- bones, muscles, the circulatory system with the heart and the blood vessels, the respiratory system, the digestive system. System by system you can isolate and look at."
Systems can also be intermingled virtually, to view how muscles are integrated with bones, for example.
"Body Box" organs and other structures can be magnified for closer inspection and revelation, she said. "It starts out looking 6 inches tall to you and you can make it so it looks 6 feet tall. You can make it life size."
Turner said the VR technology also enables users to take actual MRI or CT scan images, merging those two-dimensional images into a single, three-dimensional one. "Then you can see if it's a torn muscle or a tendon or whatever. You can visualize that in three dimensions," she said.
Perspectus software provided a virtual scan of the human heart for the lab, she noted. "You can make that gigantic. You can literally walk into it."
Navigating the virtual landscape
Students can use the VR equipment separately or in pods of four or so classmates. "You have to map your boundaries," Turner explained. "When you're in Virtual Reality, your bearings about where you are in space are gone. Where you actually are in the room. Your relationship to other people. The students will see each other within their pod in the virtual world. They'll know where each other is. We were having issues initially with mapping the boundaries. Otherwise it won't work. If you get lost, you're going to be running into things.
"We learned fairly quickly that if you have four students in a pod and they all have their controllers, they start to compete with each other. The controllers didn't always communicate the way they were supposed to, so we learned it's best to have one student in the pod that is kind of the 'go-to' person and the other students can pass around and share.
"We're learning those little tricks to how we can make it an effective learning tool for the students."
Turner said she is a student herself in employing the technology from her teaching standpoint.
"It's definitely an adjustment, and I'm continuing to try to figure out the best ways to use this as a teaching tool and a learning tool for students. But there are things they can see in this perspective that we can't mimic in any other way. I can show you my lab upstairs -- we've got models of brains, models of spinal cords. They're three-dimensional, but they're somewhat flat. They don't change. One of the things Perspectus said when they did their demo here that really hit home with me was, when you look at a picture in a book of the heart with the aorta, it looks like it goes to the side, because everything's in two dimensions. But when you look at it in the body, it goes behind. So, with this VR set-up, you get the true image of how things are placed in the body. You don't get distortions based off of how we need it to look in order to be able to see it on paper.
"There's one downside: You can't feel it, but being able to flip things, turn things and see the relationship of two structures in those three dimensions is something that we struggle to be able to do in any other way," Turner said.
"We do dissections -- hearts, brains, things like that, but they're all animal dissections. And while they're very similar to the human heart, it is not the same. Having a three-dimensional view of the human without having to get a cadaver or have special labs, this is a way, especially for undergrads, to really get a true look at the anatomy in three dimensions."
The virtual environment can also require some physical assimilation, she said. "If you're not used to the virtual world, this, as you get older, is a bit more complicated. About 20 or 30 minutes in VR is about a person's limit when they're not used to using it. You can become very disoriented. When you come out of VR, you feel a little off if you're in for too long. You get a little discombobulated when you're in that realm.
"Our goal is to use it as a teaching tool, but also what can you use it for to complement other means of learning in 30 minutes within that VR world."
Software upgrades have been made and additional Perspectus support and training are expected to take place next month for UC faculty, IT staff and students to further familiarize themselves and maximize the technology to its full capabilities, she added.
The technology should give UC students greater knowledge and experience with VR's burgeoning real-world applications. Turner said medical professionals are already referring to the VR technology to plot their surgeries. "If they're going to be operating on a tumor, say, they can go through that image and try to find the best route to get to where they need to be. They're using it in that capacity in some fields."
Developing the VR technology
Headquartered in Fort Collins, Perspectus is a virtual and mixed reality technology firm which offers its patented software platform to provide VR technology and solutions to higher-education, health-care and commercial users around the world.
Perspectus tested its VR 3D program at Colorado State University in 2020, and, by its completion, concluded it was able to increase understanding of spatial relationships and anatomical systems for 87% of CSU students.
A Perspectus case study also states that the 3D technology benefits patients as well, enhancing their understanding of the treatments they will be receiving. According to the case study, more than 80% of participating patients ranked VR as their preferred tool over current methods and said VR increased their level of understanding dramatically. The trial took place on the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo.
“We are excited to offer virtual reality technology to enhance student learning,” University of Charleston President Marty Roth said in a Nov. 10 release from the school. “As soon as we experienced the Perspectus demo, we knew this would be a game changer for core courses like Anatomy and Physiology, and in specialized health-care programs like Nursing, Radiology and Physician Assistant. The three-dimensional, highly customizable imaging dramatically enhances students’ depth of understanding.
"And we can work with our hospital and other health-care partner organizations to integrate content students will see in their clinical rotations, externships and other applied learning settings, thereby providing better career preparation,” Roth added.
“No matter how accurate a textbook or digital image is, there will always be a breakdown in communication and understanding when students are shown two-dimensional versions of three-dimensional structures. Perspectus VR solves this problem by showing images as they appear in nature -- eliminating the need to translate the data,” Perspectus Chief Operating Officer Erick Miranda said in the UC release.
“We are continually exploring the latest technological innovations that can enhance student learning and move our students to the forefront of their area of study,” University of Charleston Chief Information Officer Scott Terry said. “With this new VR lab, we’re not only helping our students build the critical reasoning necessary to provide quality care, we’re preparing them for a future where technology will improve the access to and quality of health care and medicine.”
Propelled through a partnership with Colorado-based Perspectus Inc. formed earlier this year, UC has introduced a dedicated Virtual Reality education laboratory on its campus, to redefine -- and revolutionize -- students' grasp and understanding of human anatomy, physiology and radiology in their courses and the careers they may pursue thereafter.
Specifically, UC students will soon be able to don sophisticated, goggled headsets and examine anatomy through 3D techniques in the VR Education Laboratory. The 3D technology enables its users to upload, volumize and manipulate anatomical structures, view them from various angles and enlarge and in other ways "tweak" them. Through the images provided by the technology, layers of muscle, blood vessels and bones can be added, removed, marked and shaded to distinguish their interconnected parts.
Construction of UC's grant-funded VR lab was completed in August, with a soft launch undertaken earlier this fall. The laboratory includes 30, high-powered computers with high-resolution headsets to access the Perspectus VR technology.
By spring, the lab will be used by UC Biology, Radiologic Science, Nursing, and Physician Assistant programs, among others.
Exploring 'The Body Box'
In the nascent VR Education Lab in UC's Clay Tower on Nov. 28, Associate Professor of Biology Dr. Dawn Turner demonstrated some of the system's capabilities and discussed its future uses.
"The students are helping us troubleshoot some things to get it up and fully functional; there are a lot of technical issues with everything," Turner explained. Students practice with the equipment for roughly a half-hour at a time, to acclimate their senses -- and sensibilities -- to the virtual environment.
"It's not so much, at this point, for teaching. Our goal is that we will actually conduct lectures, classes and potential assignments and assessments ultimately in that lab, once it's fully operational," Turner said.
Turner teaches undergraduate biology and physiology courses. "The route I'm using it is to teach basic anatomy. The part I use is referred to in the software as 'The Body Box.' It's an electronic sort of cadaver. It's not fully realistic, but you can adjust colors and things like that. You can isolate systems; I can have the whole body, head to toe, and look just at the bones. It has the capabilities where you can hover the controller over a bone, and it will tell you the name of the bone, for instance.
"That's what we've been using it for at this point. Students can explore, take bones apart, turn them around, get all three dimensions of them. You can do that with pretty much every system, with the exception of the skin -- bones, muscles, the circulatory system with the heart and the blood vessels, the respiratory system, the digestive system. System by system you can isolate and look at."
Systems can also be intermingled virtually, to view how muscles are integrated with bones, for example.
"Body Box" organs and other structures can be magnified for closer inspection and revelation, she said. "It starts out looking 6 inches tall to you and you can make it so it looks 6 feet tall. You can make it life size."
Turner said the VR technology also enables users to take actual MRI or CT scan images, merging those two-dimensional images into a single, three-dimensional one. "Then you can see if it's a torn muscle or a tendon or whatever. You can visualize that in three dimensions," she said.
Perspectus software provided a virtual scan of the human heart for the lab, she noted. "You can make that gigantic. You can literally walk into it."
Navigating the virtual landscape
Students can use the VR equipment separately or in pods of four or so classmates. "You have to map your boundaries," Turner explained. "When you're in Virtual Reality, your bearings about where you are in space are gone. Where you actually are in the room. Your relationship to other people. The students will see each other within their pod in the virtual world. They'll know where each other is. We were having issues initially with mapping the boundaries. Otherwise it won't work. If you get lost, you're going to be running into things.
"We learned fairly quickly that if you have four students in a pod and they all have their controllers, they start to compete with each other. The controllers didn't always communicate the way they were supposed to, so we learned it's best to have one student in the pod that is kind of the 'go-to' person and the other students can pass around and share.
"We're learning those little tricks to how we can make it an effective learning tool for the students."
Turner said she is a student herself in employing the technology from her teaching standpoint.
"It's definitely an adjustment, and I'm continuing to try to figure out the best ways to use this as a teaching tool and a learning tool for students. But there are things they can see in this perspective that we can't mimic in any other way. I can show you my lab upstairs -- we've got models of brains, models of spinal cords. They're three-dimensional, but they're somewhat flat. They don't change. One of the things Perspectus said when they did their demo here that really hit home with me was, when you look at a picture in a book of the heart with the aorta, it looks like it goes to the side, because everything's in two dimensions. But when you look at it in the body, it goes behind. So, with this VR set-up, you get the true image of how things are placed in the body. You don't get distortions based off of how we need it to look in order to be able to see it on paper.
"There's one downside: You can't feel it, but being able to flip things, turn things and see the relationship of two structures in those three dimensions is something that we struggle to be able to do in any other way," Turner said.
"We do dissections -- hearts, brains, things like that, but they're all animal dissections. And while they're very similar to the human heart, it is not the same. Having a three-dimensional view of the human without having to get a cadaver or have special labs, this is a way, especially for undergrads, to really get a true look at the anatomy in three dimensions."
The virtual environment can also require some physical assimilation, she said. "If you're not used to the virtual world, this, as you get older, is a bit more complicated. About 20 or 30 minutes in VR is about a person's limit when they're not used to using it. You can become very disoriented. When you come out of VR, you feel a little off if you're in for too long. You get a little discombobulated when you're in that realm.
"Our goal is to use it as a teaching tool, but also what can you use it for to complement other means of learning in 30 minutes within that VR world."
Software upgrades have been made and additional Perspectus support and training are expected to take place next month for UC faculty, IT staff and students to further familiarize themselves and maximize the technology to its full capabilities, she added.
The technology should give UC students greater knowledge and experience with VR's burgeoning real-world applications. Turner said medical professionals are already referring to the VR technology to plot their surgeries. "If they're going to be operating on a tumor, say, they can go through that image and try to find the best route to get to where they need to be. They're using it in that capacity in some fields."
Developing the VR technology
Headquartered in Fort Collins, Perspectus is a virtual and mixed reality technology firm which offers its patented software platform to provide VR technology and solutions to higher-education, health-care and commercial users around the world.
Perspectus tested its VR 3D program at Colorado State University in 2020, and, by its completion, concluded it was able to increase understanding of spatial relationships and anatomical systems for 87% of CSU students.
A Perspectus case study also states that the 3D technology benefits patients as well, enhancing their understanding of the treatments they will be receiving. According to the case study, more than 80% of participating patients ranked VR as their preferred tool over current methods and said VR increased their level of understanding dramatically. The trial took place on the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Colo.
“We are excited to offer virtual reality technology to enhance student learning,” University of Charleston President Marty Roth said in a Nov. 10 release from the school. “As soon as we experienced the Perspectus demo, we knew this would be a game changer for core courses like Anatomy and Physiology, and in specialized health-care programs like Nursing, Radiology and Physician Assistant. The three-dimensional, highly customizable imaging dramatically enhances students’ depth of understanding.
"And we can work with our hospital and other health-care partner organizations to integrate content students will see in their clinical rotations, externships and other applied learning settings, thereby providing better career preparation,” Roth added.
“No matter how accurate a textbook or digital image is, there will always be a breakdown in communication and understanding when students are shown two-dimensional versions of three-dimensional structures. Perspectus VR solves this problem by showing images as they appear in nature -- eliminating the need to translate the data,” Perspectus Chief Operating Officer Erick Miranda said in the UC release.
“We are continually exploring the latest technological innovations that can enhance student learning and move our students to the forefront of their area of study,” University of Charleston Chief Information Officer Scott Terry said. “With this new VR lab, we’re not only helping our students build the critical reasoning necessary to provide quality care, we’re preparing them for a future where technology will improve the access to and quality of health care and medicine.”
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