Tele-education: The virtual medical laboratory

The virtual medical laboratory (VML) was conceived to provide an Internet-accessible resource, offering access for clinicians and scientists to an invaluable data archive at the Institute of Laryngology and Otology, London. The Institute is home to the largest collection of temporal bone, laryngeal, skull and sinus sections in Europe. The skull and sinus collections include an extensive section consisting of animal material. These were contributions from zoos around the world. Over the last 50 years, samples have been carefully sectioned and stained by specialized technicians to produce histology slices of most regions of the head and neck. The aim of the project is to create a virtual medical laboratory, which will provide access to archived histological material as well as computerized tomography and magnetic resonance data. Central to this aim is the reconstruction of the internal anatomy of the temporal bone from two-dimensional histology slices, to create three-dimensional views that can be used for anatomical simulation and surgical training in otolaryngology. State-of-the-art three-dimensional reconstruction and rendering technology allows us to develop such a model. Computer-generated simulation could be made available to all hospitals in which otolaryngology is practised, via digital communication networks. We aim to develop core technology in our own specialty that is applicable to other fields of higher education, which have not been exposed to such modern teaching modalities. This has the potential to become an invaluable teaching resource for anatomists, surgeons and other scientists.