Anatomage Table helps Northwest students pursue healthcare dreams

December 10, 2024

Northwest High School students Charlotte and Nicholas stood in amazement as they watched the entire circulatory system of a human body appear on a state-of-the-art research table.
 
They then explored how the blood travels around the body by zeroing in on the head, arms, legs and feet of a life-sized three-dimensional image.

 
The two Falcons are using the Anatomage Table to pursue their healthcare dreams in the Bryan College of Health Sciences (BCHS) Focus Program. The high-tech digital platform allows students to perform hundreds of virtual scientific experiments on an interactive computer. They can complete virtual dissections, view human tissues on a cellular level and explore a library of more than 1,000 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scans.
 
Charlotte and Nicholas both said the Anatomage Table has been a game-changing piece of equipment for them. Charlotte, a senior, is planning to become a general surgeon after completing college and medical school. Nicholas, a junior, is contemplating several types of healthcare careers.
 
“I think it really gets that early onset of exposure to the body that I wouldn’t otherwise have from just textbooks and paper,” Nicholas said. “It’s a really cool hands-on experience.”
 
“I would say it’s definitely giving me a head start, because I know a lot of people who take courses like this, and they don’t have tools like this, so I’m definitely getting a jump start on it,” Charlotte said.
 
Katherine Karcher and Cindy Larson-Miller said they have been thrilled with the learning opportunities the table has created. Karcher is director of high school outreach programs at BCHS, and Larson-Miller is the science department chairperson at Northwest. Both said the Anatomage Table has generated many currents of educational electricity for students.
 
“To see those light bulbs go off, that’s a teacher’s favorite moment, I would say,” Karcher said. “One of the things that it has been so good for is piquing that curiosity. Students are just so curious about how things work, especially about how the human body works when it relates to anatomy.”
 
“One of my favorite things about teaching in general is to hear kids go, ‘Oh,’ and that happens all the time on this table,” Larson-Miller said. “It’s, ‘Oh my gosh, look at that!’ or ‘That’s so cool, look what you can do here!’ or ‘I never thought it looked like that!’ or ‘Why is the intestine that color?’ They can ask questions and think about things in a different way than they would if they were just reading about it or watching a video about it.”
 
BCHS Focus Program students first learned that Anatomage Tables existed when they saw one at a Nebraska Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) State Leadership Conference. They immediately told Larson-Miller that they needed to have a table in their classroom, and Larson-Miller soon realized how valuable the tool could be.
 
The Anatomage Table is a large computer that features many specialized software applications. The BCHS Focus Program model includes images of five cadavers of people who donated their bodies to science. Workers at Anatomage – the company that made the table – cut the cadavers and took digital photos of each part of the bodies. They then virtually reassembled and compiled all of the photos into 3D-rendered images for students to learn from.
 
Karcher’s predecessor, Jason States, worked with both Larson-Miller and Jason Thomsen, the curriculum specialist for career and technical education (CTE) at Lincoln Public Schools, on the project. They shared ideas with a BCHS grant writer who submitted a proposal to the Nebraska Department of Education (NDE).
 
The NDE awarded the BCHS Focus Program nearly $85,000 through a reVISION Action Grant to purchase the table. State officials felt the equipment aligned well with the purpose of the reVISION Action Grant initiative, which is to improve, modernize and expand CTE programs.
 
Charlotte said she has enjoyed using the table since it arrived at Northwest this summer. She and other BCHS Focus Program students have already made many discoveries on it. Unlike a cadaver, which can be dissected only once, bodies in the Anatomage Table’s library can be digitally cut and reassembled as many times as needed.
 
“We’ve studied anatomy in the textbooks, but actually being able to see something like that in person is, it’s just really cool,” Charlotte said.
 
Nicholas said the Anatomage Table is also influencing decisions about his own personal health. One of the cadavers included in the table’s library is of a person who died from a tumor in his chest. Students have been able to see how the tumor affected the patient and possible reasons for its formation.
 
“When I saw the tumor in his chest, it was very likely caused by just behaviors and habits that he may have picked up over his life, so when I think about my future and if I don’t want to go down that path, it’s an awakening when you think about it,” Nicholas said.
 
Karcher said the Anatomage Table will continue to help students like Charlotte and Nicholas pursue their healthcare dreams for many years to come.
 
“It is above and beyond expectations for all of the things that it has allowed us to do, and we’re just so excited to keep learning more about it,” Karcher said.

To learn more about the Bryan College of Health Sciences Focus Program at Northwest, visit our website at https://healthsciences.lps.org/. 
 
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