SBIR Phase I: Anatomy Reimagined in an Educational Tool with Gaming and 3D Models

The broader impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will lead to new educational software for learning human anatomy. The software will serve 54,000 healthcare professional students studying anatomy each year in the U.S., as well as 450,000 undergraduate students. Anatomy is the cornerstone of medical education with cadaver dissection serving as the gold standard teaching method.

However, many students have limited or no access to cadavers during their academic experience. Learning resources in human anatomy (textbooks, models, apps) are generally color-coded, computer-generated images that lack the complexities and appearance of cadavers. These learning materials do not match dissected specimens, making knowledge transfer more difficult.

To overcome these challenges, the proposed software will marry digital cadaveric models with captivating educational gaming strategies. The software will bring high-quality anatomy education to low resource settings in the U.S. and abroad.

The proposed project will incorporate principles of educational psychology and learning science to develop a gaming platform for healthcare professional students (e.g. medical, physical therapy, dental, physician assistant) to learn human anatomy. The games will be built on a virtual atlas of human anatomy created from high-resolution images of dissected human cadavers.

For this proof-of-feasibility project, we will focus on the human heart. Technical hurdles to this project include incorporating learning principles into the games and converting anatomy images into a software package that can run on devices, such as iPads and smartphones, while maintaining resolution and usability features. During this project, we will capture images of the human heart, transfer them into the appropriate software development platform, and then add education features and games in an iterative process.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.