An interactive cadaver dissection simulator

Cadaver dissection is a valuable tool in anatomy teaching for medical students. With practical constraints that anatomy teachers face today, they seek to improve the quality of teaching using computer aided novel teaching methods. In this paper, we propose a cadaver dissection simulator based on the digital anatomical images of Visible Human Project dataset. The simulator would be used as a pre-lab tool to get familiar with the dissection process. Students are able to interact with the tool and define an organ or an area of a region to be removed. By defining and removing each successive organ/region, dissection could be carried out as it is being done in the laboratory. The original true colour is preserved in the rendered volume to impart a real life experience. In developing the simulator, the original digital images were pre-processed by “The Visible Human Preprocessing Toolkit” plug-in of ImageJ. Further processing was done through the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) to remove unnecessary patches that remained in the background. Segmentation of the preprocessed images was carried out by the “LiveWire” plug-in in ImageJ. Finally, true colour visualization was carried out through VTK. We successfully demonstrated the simulator for dissection in the abdomen region.