The effectiveness of concomitant use of cross-sectional anatomy and CT images in teaching anatomy to medical imaging students
Date
2019-12-05Citation:
Aziz, J., & Thorogood, J. (2019, December). The Effectiveness of Concomitant Use of Cross-Sectional Anatomy and CT images in Teaching Anatomy to Medical Imaging Students. Paper presented at the The Annual conference of ANZACA 2019, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia.Permanent link to Research Bank record:
https://hdl.handle.net/10652/4890Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Cross-sectional anatomy is crucial in the comprehensive study of the details of the whole body to the medical students in general; while to the medical imaging students in particular. Furthermore, it is most important to the medical imaging specialists during their education or after graduation to improve their skills in imaging interpretation; mainly for CT scan and MRI.
OBJECTIVE:
To determine the value of teaching cross-sectional anatomy to medical imaging students and its effectiveness to improve their skills in imaging interpretation.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
Fifty-eight students from the medical imaging program were were included in this study. Students were divided into two groups; Group I (29) from the academic year 2017-2018 had been taught sectional anatomy without concomitant use of CT images 1 year before the test, Group II (29 ) from the academic year 2018-2019 and were studying sectional anatomy with concomitant use of CT images. The educational methodology consists of identifying anatomical structures displayed in plastinated sections from human cadavers available on online resource and its corresponding anatomical structures in computed tomography (CT) sections from healthy patients on the same or another online resource. To assess and verify the impact of learning sectional anatomy on radiological knowledge, students were asked to identify ten anatomical structures on thoracic CT images at the level of the aortic arch (superior mediastinum).
RESULTS:
The percentages of students in groups I and II who correctly identified the anatomical structures in the test were measured. The percentage of errors in group II were much lower than the errors in the group I. Analysis of the results revealed a significant difference in test scores with scores of 89.7% and 65.5%, respectively.
CONCLUSION:
These results provide evidence that the implementation of the sectional anatomy as a tool in teaching anatomy becomes a crucial fact in medical imaging curricula and has a great impact on subsequent CT interpretation.
