NEW LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS USING HOLOGRAPHIC SYSTEMS TO REPRESENT TRIDIMENSIONAL ANATOMICAL IMAGES

The term hologram, which derives from the Greek word ‘holos’ (everthing, the whole of it) and ‘gramma’ (message), was coined by the Hungarian scientist Dennis Gabor, who received the Nobel Price for this discovery in 1971.
Holographical systems will shortly change the format of teaching materials that represent morphological structures of the human body. In this paper, we present a 3D learning environment set in a futurist scenario, which is based on a holographic room where the teacher can explain in detail anatomical structures such as bones, getting with its use a better understanding, attention and enjoyability in the teaching processes.
To develop this environment, we modelled the stage by using four-side polygons designed with Autodesk Maya computing programme, and using Mental Ray to carry out the rendering procedure. Materials used in the texturing process were mainly lamber (matt), blind (glow) for metals and reflecting surfaces, and phong for more organic materials such as bones. We configured different parameters such as glow or environmental transparence to get the emulation of a hologram. We create a texture linked to the sequence of images png obtained from chroma key programme. We recorded the teacher in a chroma studio, afterwards working with Composite Lab on the resulting image. We later incorporate the character into the stage using the editing and post-production programme Sony Vegas. Sound is finally added with the help of an audio editing prgramme such as Audacity, importing it to Sony Vegas together with sounds needs for the final scene.
Holographic techniques applied to the field of health sciences allow us to approach reality in the visualization of tridimensional objects such as anatomical body structures which are shown to us in colour, with a good resolution and with the possibility to be moved in any direction. This broad range of possibilities means a very relevant teaching advantage in both the understanding and learning of anatomical elements, as holograms contain more information on the shape of anatomical structures than any simple photography. Holograms also enable the visualization of its relief and the variation of the observer’s position to obtain different perspectives on the holographic structure.
There is no doubt that holographic environments constitute a powerful tool to assist 3D biomedical images processing, also enabling a better visualization of body structures to make learning easier. One of the most important applications of holographic systems is its value as information store.
Acknowledgements: This study has been partially funded by the Project I+D +i EDU2009-08753EDUC (subprogramme EDUC), of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education.