Pairing of colored‐wax filled heart slices and CT images

Abstract

The increasingly frequent use and great utility of advanced diagnostic imaging in medical practice calls for early, frequent and creative use of imaging in the medical curriculum. An anatomy instructor (DJE) noticed that students who have mastered cadaveric heart anatomy often have difficulty identifying the chambers, septae and valves of the heart on CT images. He then commented that there would be value in comparing thorax CT images to a cadaver heart that had been sliced in the transverse plane. Several students decided to pursue this novel dissection project. A superficially dissected heart was harvested from an embalmed cadaver. The right and left chambers were cleaned and filled with commercially available blue and red gel wax; then the heart was sectioned with a large knife at approximately 2 cm intervals in the transverse plane, starting at the inferior margin. After each slice, the heart was photographed while it was carefully positioned and held by hand adjacent to a photograph of a thorax CT slice. (The CT images were photographed with a Canon Rebel ® 35 mm film camera; these photographs were scanned, digitally edited and printed.) The resulting composite pictures were made available to all students as a computer slide-show. The project was repeated when another undissected heart became available three years later. This way of helping students to “visualize” the orientation and sequence of CT images enhances medical students’ education and prepares them for real world experiences.