Visuo-haptic learning of the cochlea: Using physical optical glyphs with augmented reality

To develop a novel augmented reality (AR)-enabled teaching tool to demonstrate the complex structure of the human cochlea to medical students. The cochlea is small but intricate anatomical structure often represented as a snail shell-like object. It is more accurately defined as a spiral negative space within the temporal bone, but this is difficult to convey with traditional teaching tools (prosections and illustrations largely). Using a handheld tablet equipped with an integrated camera, digitally-rendered 3D models of this structure can be visually superimposed over illustrations of the cochlea and/or physical models of the petrous temporal bone, thus highlighting the negative space.