Notre Dame Prep’s Anatomage table provides insights into the body

Using their fingertips, Morgan Baird and Reagan Riemer carefully manipulated 3D images of the muscles and bones of a human shoulder and elbow during a sports medicine class last school year at Notre Dame Preparatory School in Towson.

Under their quick, sure hands, joints flexed and turned as the graduating seniors probed tissue to see different views.

“You can see everything,” marveled Baird, a parishioner of St. Joseph in Cockeysville. “With models in the class, you only see so much.”

The detailed views of the human body were made possible by NDP’s state-of-the art Anatomage Table. The all-girls school is the only high school in Maryland with a full-sized Anatomage Table, according to Mary Agnes Sheridan, director of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) at NDP. 

The 6-foot-long table’s software features a fully segmented real human 3D anatomy system, according to the Anatomage website. Individual structures are also reconstructed in 3D. Two large touch screens allow users to explore the images from every angle.

“It isolates each system,” Sheridan said. “You can go into the heart through the valves and see the chambers.”

A donor who wished to remain anonymous purchased the $60,000 table in 2020 for the school’s newly opened Innovation Wing, where the majority of the school’s STEAM classrooms reside.

“We had a large number of students interested in the medical field,” said Sheridan, noting that the technology is used for the study of anatomy, physiology, sports medicine and health. “We felt it would have a large impact. Students love the virtual experience. It expanded their thinking and what is possible with the medical field.”

While the table provides a unique insight into human anatomy, traditional animal dissections are still a part of the curriculum, Sheridan said. The Anatomage Table often enhances dissection studies.

“We would dissect the rat, look at the table and comment on the differences in them,” said Riemer, a parishioner of St. Stephen in Bradshaw.

The Anatomage Table gives teachers a unique opportunity, according to Brian Letnaunchyn, a science teacher at Notre Dame: the chance to do human dissections without a real body.

“There is no squeamishness,” Letnaunchyn said. “Students are more willing to dive into this. We can look at things and how they relate.”

Traditional dissections require a lot of time to prepare, cut and clean up. The table allows things to be done very quickly, Letnaunchyn said. Students who are visual learners also benefit as they can see how things relate and work by interacting with the table.

This is Letnaunchyn’s second year teaching sports medicine and anatomy at NDP.  Fellow teachers helped him learn how to use the table, and there are online training videos.

“It’s pretty interesting and a lot of fun to use,” Letnaunchyn said.

When time allows, Letnaunchyn lets students play with the table. Riemer and Baird often explored the mystery of childbirth when they were students at NDP.

“You can see all the different stages of it,” Morgan said. “How the organs change as the baby grows. How the baby twists during delivery. We hadn’t seen anything like that before.”

Sheridan called it “wonderful” to be able to provide those kinds of experiences for students.

“This was a huge purchase,” she said. “It was totally worth it, every penny.”

Email Katie Jones at kjones@CatholicReview.org

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