The Third Dimension: 3D Printed Replicas and Other Alternatives to Cadaver-Based Learning

Capturing the ‘third dimension’ of complex human form or anatomy has been an objective of artists and anatomists from the renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries onwards. Many of these drawings, paintings, and sculptures have had a profound influence on medical teaching and the learning resources we took for granted until around 40 years ago. Since then, the teaching of human anatomy has undergone significant change, especially in respect of the technologies available to augment or replace traditional cadaver-based dissection instruction. Whilst resources such as atlases, wall charts, plastic models, and images from the Internet have been around for many decades, institutions looking to reduce the reliance on dissection-based teaching in medical or health professional training programmes have in more recent times increasingly had access to a range of other options for classroom-based instruction. These include digital resources and software programmes and plastinated specimens, although the latter come with a range of ethical and cost considerations. However, the urge to recapitulate the ‘third dimension’ of anatomy has seen the recent advent of novel resources in the form of 3D printed replicas. These 3D printed replicas of normal human anatomy dissections are based on a combination of radiographic imaging and surface scanning that captures critical 3D anatomical information. The final 3D files can either be augmented with false colour or made to closely resemble traditional prosections prior to printing. This chapter details the journey we and others have taken in the search for the ‘third dimension’. The future of a haptically identical, anatomically accurate replica of human cadaver specimens for surgical and medical training is nearly upon us. Indeed, the need for hard copy replicas may eventually be superseded by the opportunities afforded by virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR).