Abstract:

Throughout the last decades, many computer applications have been developed to process radiological images obtained from various sources such as CT and MRI. The main objective of these applications is to help professionals in their daily diagnosis tasks, especially for radiologists, but it is also applicable in the surgical field as a guide in surgery procedure.

These type of software can provide sophisticated tools which allow their users to process, review and analyze medical images. One of the possibilities is to create 3D models out from 2D image data, which has been a relevant improvement in the medical sector. 3D images allows the users to have a better anatomical idea than looking to the 2D image.

Also for students in the health area, these software can be very useful, providing better insights of the anatomy and some pathologies than the traditional methods. 3D data allows not only easy visualization of the anatomy, it can also enable students to modify it boosting learning potential in an efficient way. In addition, some of these software easily accessible and simple to use because of their flexible user interface.
Even though there are a lot of platforms in the market that can provide these functionalities described, most of them are unknown for students.

Our aim is to present some of these applications which can be useful as educational software directly by students of the health area like medicine students or odontology students, doing the learning process of the human anatomy more interactive and amusing.

We will analyze five software which we considered as the best learning platforms for students; OsiriX, 3D Slicer, Amira and Mimics. All of them are available on the website and most for free. We will compare them from the user's point of view and describe their characteristics, emphasizing the strengths of each one.

Keywords:

3D images, educational software, radiology, OsiriX, 3D Slicer, Amira, Mimics.