VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Working with cadavers, a corpse, is critical for most careers in the medical field.
But for many students, it can be an intimidating and a long process.
“I was pretty concerned about the cadaver thing,” said aspiring registered nurse Anna Wilson.
At ECPI University’s College of Health Science, new technology is helping students explore the human body without the initial shock.
“Gives us the 3D models without all the mess,” said instructor Kirsten Mahon.
Mahon is referring to the Anatomage Table.
It’s a digital monitor the size of a regular medical work table that allows students to visualize anatomy exactly as they would with a fresh cadaver.
Capturing the body in its entirety is a complex process that involves blending thousands of images from an actual human body. The template body is a former death-row inmate.
Mahon can do quizzes on the table, dissect the body freely, certain tools even allow students to go down to the tissue and cellular levels of the digital cadaver.
“After all that, you can touch a button to bring the cadaver back to where it was originally and go on to something else,” said Mahon. “[Students] don’t want to leave the lab.”
The numbers back that claim up because in the year the school has been using the table, pass rates in one of their most difficult courses, Anatomy, and Physiology, have increased by around 25 percent.