Wearing virtual reality goggles, Jordan Holler was hard at work taking apart muscles inside of a body.

The first-year medical student at UC San Francisco wasn’t touching any real tissues, though. He was using new technology that allowed him to put on a headset and start to “move” anatomy, revealing layers and structures. Then the virtual reality program can be reset to do it over in a new way.

His work is part of new curriculum at UCSF that uses cutting-edge virtual reality technology to bridge hands-on training with cadavers and textbook learning.

“It helps us understand anatomy much better,” he said.

The Base of Medical Education

Anatomy forms the foundation for much of what a medical student needs to learn and what a doctor needs to know, but it is often a dreaded memorization ordeal and a challenge to see how all the bones, muscles, nerves and organs fit together.

“Our instructors do an amazing job, but at the same time it is difficult to get an entire three-dimensional picture of what is going on,” Holler said.

Cadavers and textbooks have limitations in what they can convey. Virtual reality improves upon learning from a cadaver by its ability to go from the skin layer all the way down to the bones, and back again. Learners can remove every single layer independently and see the different relationships between the muscles and nerves and organs, zooming in to the microscopic level if desired. The process can then be reversed completely back to the skin.