The Application of 3D Anatomy for Teaching Veterinary Clinical Neurology

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Anatomy is regarded as a key element in medical and veterinary education all over the world. It is a subject of voluminous and sometimes complex content, which normally causes students’ different difficulties. These difficulties increase dramatically when it comes to the study of neuroanatomy. Hence, there have been continued efforts in developing new methods of teaching, learning and assessment that are aimed at the long-term retention of anatomical and neuroanatomical knowledge. Additionally, clinical neurology can be difficult for veterinary students to comprehend, and there is no doubt that part of its understanding is directly related to the knowledge of neuroanatomy. Therefore, the aim of this present work is to be a teaching tool oriented towards clinical neurology and clinical practice, through 3D reconstructions of magnetic resonance images of normal brains and clinical neurological cases. ABSTRACT: Neuroanatomy is always a challenging topic for veterinary students. It is widely accepted that understanding the anatomy of the central nervous system (CNS) is essential to explain many of the pathological processes that affect the brain. Although its study has varied over time to achieve this goal, in human and veterinary medicine it is difficult to find a teaching method that associates normal anatomy with pathological alterations of the brain. For the first time, we have created an educational tool that combines neuroanatomy and neuropathology, using different magnetic resonance (MR) images as a basis and EspINA software as analyzer, to obtain segmented structures and 3D reconstructions of the dog brain. We demonstrate that this combination is an optimal tool to help anatomists to understand the encephalon, and additionally to help clinicians to recognize illness including a multitude of neurological problems. In addition, we have tried to see whether photogrammetry, which is a common technique in other sciences, for example geology, could be useful to teach veterinary neuroanatomy. Although we still need further investigations, we have been able to generate 3D reconstructions of the whole brain, with very promising results to date.