For many years, medical science has been in the list of demanded study programmes. It has various sub programmes making it relatively a multidisciplinary science that includes a combination of medicine, biology, chemistry and even computer knowledge. Many students have problems with understanding issues connected to above mentioned disciplines due to the complexity, availability of various models, necessity of abstract thinking and the fact that those concepts are not fully tangible. Deficiencies in fundamentals prevent further development and exploration of more complicated problems. As medical studies usually necessitate dealing with the human body, the learning process may involve harming one’s health, which has always been questioned from both ethical and financial viewpoints. Therefore, an alternative which could replace the real human body with a virtual alternative will be of a great assistance by exempting from a considerable portion of the expenses and physical burdens. Using 3D models, simulation of the physical interactions and visualizing the resulting processes will lead to a flexible infrastructure where all the desired characteristics can be easily configured and adjusted based on the circumstances governing the experimental setup at no cost. As a major list of the foregoing parameters, in a development context, more detailed simulations of the effects of forces of various types may need to be incorporated into the system, which can be smoothly achieved in the aforementioned settings, despite its physical counterpart. Teaching of anatomy for students of medical science has traditionally been based on dissecting of cadavers. However, ethical considerations significantly limit the availability of corpses for anatomical dissections. Furthermore, use of cadavers for anatomical dissections has several drawbacks like complicated and time-consuming embalmment methods, costly requirements for dissection rooms, and necessity of students to acquire certain level of dissection skills. Without adequate experience students can easily miss or even destruct important anatomical details. However, ICT can introduce a unique solution by introducing realistic interactive 3D models of body in the virtual reality environment to help the student to interact with the model, get more detailed information during manipulation of the model and avoid the aforementioned difficulties. Furthermore, at the processing and analysis stages, ICT algorithms are widely employed for the sake of enhancing and refining the raw data, which is exemplified by the broad usage of image processing and computer graphic techniques responsible for statistical analysis, visualization and data representation. In order to enable the students to access such unique virtual reality (VR) based learning systems, 3D models, interactive environments and the required infrastructure need to be prepared so that the students of medical science can learn the designed materials in a more efficient way. The development will help all the students who are learning human body anatomy in an interactive way without any concern about a lack of experience due to the limitations of conventional and classical teaching methods. Such a development can be an example for further development of similar topics, not only in medical studies but also other modules such as cell biology, animal anatomy, chemistry, and physics. We believe, that by applying VR based learning system as a part of existing curriculum in the field of anatomy, we will achieve the main goal of this project, which is to improve the quality and efficiency of higher education as well as qualifications, competences and skills of graduates and increase their competitiveness in the life after graduation. The proposed project and its outputs involve three crucial target groups: students, academics and business. The project will improve following hard competencies of medical science graduates: principles of human anatomy structures, complex body part joints and principles of body activities from anatomy perspective, realistic models of body parts, interactive communication between students and lectures during learning process. The universities and academic staff will benefit from: -access to simulations of detailed body parts as long as they want at any time that they want; -more accessible use due to reduced need of supervision; -attractive teaching tool tailored to fit the curriculum. From the business (including hospitals) perspective: -graduates with higher qualifications; -less training for new employees; -possibility to prepare the students for future work (i.e. by providing specific machinery specifications to be put in the VR application while they are conducting some anatomy learning, such as how muscles works while specific sport activity is being conducted). The consortium consists of three parties: University of Tartu (the leader), Lodz University of Technology, and Charles University.
The goal of the project was to create and implement a new teaching tool for medical anatomy studies using the educational properties of VR as a platform. Stemming from this, the goal was to develop training materials for the system and use it to train local staff and students.
According to the European Commission Education & Training 2020 programme and the report on the Modernization Agenda of Higher Education, there exists many main challenges facing higher education among which one is improvement of quality and relevance of teaching and learning. Qualified employees should have a thorough education, knowledge, practice and experience in a particular field. According to Operational Programme Human Capital study, nearly 80% of employers reported problems with finding qualified workers in 2014 and a high demand for practical exercises, which the university is unable to provide due to limited resources in both staff and more importantly equipment. In particular, medical students are facing the latter problem more frequently in courses such as anatomy that having detailed models are rare to be used for many frequent uses. Nowadays, numerous technologies and applications benefit from ICT-based methodologies and utilities in various terms. In terms of medical education, ICT has made it possible to train the students conveniently, without demanding the presence of the actual and physical materials and can allow students to be trained remotely which was very relevant during the development of this project.