Penn State Altoona Eiche Library offers new Anatomage Table

ALTOONA, Pa. - Penn State Altoona students now have access to an advanced, highly technological virtual dissection and visualization tool housed in Eiche Library.

The Anatomage Table is an operating-bed-sized table that provides accurate 3D visualizations of human and animal anatomy.

Head librarian Bonnie Imler says she felt the table would make a great addition to the library's growing collection of medical models. "Anytime a student can have hands-on training in addition to lecture, it enhances learning," she says. In spring 2024, the campus purchased a table, and University Libraries provided the monitors and additional furnishings for the room.

The table can be reserved by instructors in any course through the campus reservation system, and students can use the table when it is not reserved on a first-come basis.

With the large touchscreen, users can easily experience immersive, hands-on interaction including virtual dissection of full-scale images of real human and animal cadavers, removing layers to reveal bones, muscles, nerves, veins, and arteries, making incisions with digital tools, exploring thousands of real medical cases, watch annotated blood flow animation, view and interact with specific joints; and view 3D models of real cadaver prosections.