In its latest digital anatomy lab in Clifton, Ziauddin University of Karachi has introduced a 3D virtual dissection table. It is reportedly the country’s first of its kind.
“Ziauddin University is launching the 3D virtual dissection table that is being brought to all Ziauddin University campuses and hospitals to help students achieve technology-based learning for the very first time in Pakistan’s history,” Chancellor Dr Asim Hussain of Ziauddin University said at the opening on Thursday.
As a learning platform for university students of all years, the new dissection table, called Anatomage will be used. Across all three campuses, it can be connected to numerous physical locations.
“For all medical and dental students, laboratories, radiologists, nurses, surgeons, doctors and house officers, it will be helpful,” said Dr. Bushra Wasim Khan, a professor and head of the Ziauddin Department of Anatomy.
To allow users to imagine the structure of the body in great anatomical detail, Anatomage uses the latest 3D technology.
“Your finger becomes a scalpel,” Dr. Abbas Zafar, a Ziauddin Faculty of Health Sciences professor and dean, told media.
“At various angles, you can visualize and rotate every organ and look at any cross-section.”
The unclaimed bodies brought from hospital morgues were one of those corpses. The practice largely died down when the Supreme Court banned the use of medical schools of actual human bodies.
The bodies were preserved using formalin, which can be poisonous and allergenic and is a pungent chemical. For students, the encounter was also emotionally unsettling.
