Do Engineering and Nature Science Students Understand Medicine Better by Working With Real and Touchable 3D-objects Rather With Medical 2D-images?

Conference: The Asian Conference on Education (ACE2022)
Title: Do Engineering and Nature Science Students Understand Medicine Better by Working With Real and Touchable 3D-objects Rather With Medical 2D-images?
Stream: Interdisciplinary, Multidisciplinary & Transdisciplinary Education
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Authors:
Andreas Ritter, RWTH Aachen University Hospital, Germany
Martin Baumann, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Lea Hitpaß, RWTH Aachen University Hospital, Germany

Abstract:

In recent years, medical engineering has gained enormous popularity in university education, and many STEM students take this specialisation. This work aims at the question if and how 3D printing can build a bridge for STEM students between recognizing flat 2D-images of anatomic structures and the identifying the real 3D-shape of the underlying anatomy. And if so, is there a higher grade of understanding basic anatomic pathologies?

Interprofessional work and causal understanding of anatomy and physiology take wide space in many STEM curricula. Radiological imaging provides an ideal coupling for these components by developing a real idea of 3D structures from 2D sectional images and applying this to basic pathological processes. In our cooperation between lecturers of engineering, natural sciences and radiology, STEM students were cooperatively taught to match (anonymised) clinical radiology images of the spine and the heart with 3D-prints of these structures (taken from the original data).

We found that understanding of 2D cross-sectional images can be increased in several learning scenarios, which include: (A) Lecturers from medicine and STEM interact face-to-face with students. This includes case presentations or quizzes to pair the images with distributed 3D printouts. (B) In video conferences 3D models can be presented to student groups. Moderated by the lecturer team, the groups’ task is to convey to other groups an understanding of the structure and possible pathological problems that can be derived from it. An additional important success factor is the parallel presence of a team of clinical and STEM lecturers.

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