Project “The human heart in Virtual Reality”
27 de November de 2023
The project “The human heart in Virtual Reality” is a simulation with ultra-realistic Virtual Reality models, which arises from the collaboration of Immersium Studio with Pepita Giménez-Bonafé, Associate Professor of the Department of Physiological Sciences of University of Barcelona Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (Bellvitge Campus). It is a project financed by the Recerca, Innovació i Millora de la Docència i l’Aprenentatge (RIMDA) program.
This project is also linked to the DIGAPREN project, where Immersium Studio won the public tender of the University of Barcelona in July 2023 to design its learning resources in Virtual Reality. The DIGAPREN project comes from the framework of the subsidy for the modernization and digitalization of the Spanish university system (RD 641/2021 of July 27, 2021 – UNIDIGITAL) linked to the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan financed by the European Union – Next Generation EU. In the DIGAPREN project, “Digitization of learning environments”, Virtual Reality solutions are being developed applied to different disciplines in the field of health sciences, medicine and nursing on physical examination of a patient and detection of symptoms.
According to Pepita Giménez-Bonafé, the idea of incorporating Virtual Reality into Physiology and Anatomy practices came from a fellow Nursing student who spent a stay at the University of Norway (Western Norway University of Applied Sciences) where she had the experience : VR practices for Anatomy and Physiology students using the 3D Organon VR Visible Body, where students traveled inside the human body, visiting different organs and systems, and as a final result they were very satisfied with the experience. Given that the UB has already incorporated several pilots with VR, such as in the Nursing master’s degree, or in the Faculty of Psychology, it was considered a good time to do a pilot project with a tour of the heart and lungs.
The project we have carried out is to apply Virtual Reality (VR) to Human Physiology and Anatomy. Specifically, we have developed an immersive experience using Virtual Reality to explain how a human heart works. The user can take an immersive virtual tour with an animated 3D model of the heart and lungs, so they can see what a systole and diastole are, observing the blood leaving the lungs and the rest of the body. At the same time, it is seen that when blood leaves, it is exchanged with lungs tissues through capillaries, and then returns to the heart.
VR provides a safe and controlled way to experience and explore the functioning of the human body. Medical students can immerse themselves in virtual models of the human body, interact with physiological systems and observe how they function in real time. This gives them a unique opportunity to visualize and understand complex theoretical concepts in a more practical and meaningful way.
The immersive experience that we have developed has already begun to be used in November 2023 with students from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona, to support teaching in Physiology for the Podiatry degree. The practical, physiology and human anatomy students were the first to have had the opportunity to enjoy this innovative tool. They have visualized the functioning of the human heart through cardboard Virtual Reality glasses, which work with the user’s mobile phone.
Our immersive experience has been very well received by students, who have expressed the usefulness of this tool to be able to more easily visualize the internal workings of a heart in an attractive and innovative way.
Pepita Giménez-Bonafé’s intention is to continue this digitalization project in the classrooms. For this reason, she wants to extend the virtual tour to all the organs of the human body, since, as she herself states, “by simulating virtual environments, students can visualize the organs, systems and physiological processes in 3D, which “It facilitates understanding and learning of complex topics.”
This resource will also be incorporated into the teaching of medicine (subjects of Anatomy and Embryology of Organs and Systems and of Medical Physiology II), of biomedical sciences (subjects of Anatomy, Human Physiology I and II), of podiatry (subjects of Human Anatomy and of Physiology) and dentistry (subjects of Human Anatomy and Human Physiology).
We are very happy to contribute our technology to universities to provide students with a deeper knowledge of human anatomy through Virtual Reality. Society is changing, opening the way to new technologies, and education is a sector where this technology is increasing, as it allows a very attractive way to learn in an innovative way. VR allows users to immerse themselves in computer-generated virtual environments, providing them with an immersive sensory experience, which greatly enriches students’ knowledge.
