3-D learning environment at Crerar immerses students in virtual anatomy

For Dr. Jonathan Silverstein, “interactive stereoscopy is worth a thousand pictures.” By partnering with IT Services staff and with Dr. Silverstein, Associate Director of the Computation Institute and Associate Professor of Surgery, Radiology and the College, the Library has created a cutting-edge, 3-D learning environment that is now available for use by UChicago faculty from any discipline.

The first faculty member to teach a 3-D course on campus, Dr. Silverstein taught Immersive Virtual Anatomy to College students at UChicago in the Kathleen A. Zar Room during spring quarter 2010—while 3,831 miles away, another group in Cardiff, Wales, saw the same presentations simultaneously via the AccessGrid. Dr. Silverstein will teach the course again in Spring 2011 and hopes to expand to include other Midwestern universities in his classes in real time.

The idea for the 3-D course came from Dr. Silverstein’s research, which involved developing stereoscopic tools for visualizing surgical anatomy from real clinical data. “It became apparent that an ideal way to use the technology was for teaching—and that one could assemble a simultaneous global classroom by combining the stereoscopic rendering with Internet-based telecollaboration with audio and video,” he said. “When we were able to do this and ‘prove’ that people learned more efficiently in a stereoscopic environment with a focused curriculum, I became motivated to create a new course to leverage what we had learned.”

To make 3-D presentations possible, staff from IT Services and the Library upgraded the already multimedia-equipped Zar Room with a 10-foot silver screen specially formulated for high-quality, polarized 3-D projections. Specialized software and a ceiling-mounted, 2-projector, stereoscopic set-up create images for the left and the right eye simultaneously from a single image. When viewed with polarized glasses, 3-D images become visible. The Zar Room is the only space on campus that provides 3-D projection to faculty from any discipline.

Immersive Virtual Anatomy has been a hit with students, according to Dr. Silverstein, and the Zar Room provides the ideal environment for his course.  “The large format displays—including large stereoscopic and standard screens combined in one room—allow the professor to engage the class with multiple digital tools simultaneously, making this course what it was really intended to be,” he said. “As we go forward, we can incorporate student interaction and control in the class to stereoscopically point at items in the displays and ask ‘What is that?!’ This will make it truly an interactive laboratory-type environment.”

The Kathleen A. Zar Room was created to honor the memory of Kathleen A. Zar, Science Librarian and Assistant Director for the Science Libraries from 1994 to 2006. It was made possible through the generosity of Kathleen’s husband, Howard Zar; her mother, Margaret Sykora; the John Crerar Foundation; and many friends. To make arrangements to teach in the Zar Room, contact Sarah Burgin.

Photo of Dr. Silverstein by John Easton, University of Chicago Hospitals