Temporal Visualization of Body Cavity Partitioning: An Interactive Timeline

Embryology is essential for future health care providers to understand due to clinical significance, since birth defects and prematurity are leading causes of disability and infant mortality. The lack of embryology visualizations presents a barrier to discovering embryonic relationships quickly and efficiently. A web-based, interactive timeline on body cavity partitioning was developed to allow users to discover key developmental landmarks of both normal and abnormal embryonic development. Body cavity partitioning was chosen as the area of focus, as organ system development is directly related to the embryonic spaces. Users can select events, which highlights related structures and defects with visual cues. It was anticipated that users would be able to find information about body cavity partitioning and embryonic defects more quickly and efficiently with the interactive resource versus a typical static resource containing just the content and images, in addition to gaining embryology knowledge. Thirty-four subjects participated in the study; 11 dental students, and 23 biomedical visualization students. Subjects’ post-test scores increased with both resources; however, only two of the six distributed tasks were completed more efficiently using the interactive resource. This resource has the potential to be improved and expanded to include other body systems in human embryology to provide a reference for students studying human embryology.