For students enrolled in Mississippi State University’s Physician Assistant Studies program, learning to dissect human anatomy is a lot simpler now with the addition of 10 new technologically advanced 3D digital cadavers.

“We are very, very lucky to have the latest technologically advanced anatomy lab equipment,” said Dr. Hatem Mourad, who teaches human anatomy and physiology for the PA program. “It really exceeds the expectations of any program around us.”

MSU’s physician assistant program is the state’s only publicly funded master’s degree program of its kind. With a current enrollment of 74 students in its three cohorts, the program is located in the Rosenbaum building on MSU-Meridian’s Riley campus.

The 10 new Anatomage tables were funded through a grant totaling nearly $1 million from the Health Resources & Services Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

In addition to the digital cadavers, grant funding was used to purchase additional examination tables and instrument panels for the patient assessment lab.

Funding also will be used to hire an architect to design a simulation lab on the third floor of the Rosenbaum building for interprofessional clinical healthcare programs, said Dr. Terry Dale Cruse, associate vice president and head of campus at MSU-Meridian.

Students in the highly competitive PA program’s third cohort are using the Anatomage tables in their human anatomy and physiology class. Altogether, 31 students make up the third cohort, including 17 Mississippians and 14 students from nine other states.

Previously, the PA program relied on one digital cadaver located in the front of the room with screens on the walls for students to follow along. Now, several students gather around each life-sized, touch-screen table to practice dissecting and reviewing case studies.

“Anatomy is a fundamental building block in medicine. It is a course you typically take in the first semester of your medical education,” said Dr. Mourad, who also serves as director of hospital medicine and medical director of critical care at Anderson Regional Health System.

“In traditional medical education, you had a cadaver lab and it smelled horrible with formaldehyde and gloves. You couldn’t eat or drink in there,” he said.

The new digital cadavers offer students a completely differently experience, Dr. Mourad said. Students can access the cadavers any time during the building’s operational hours.

Students also are able to dissect four different cadavers left and right whereas when he was in medical school a group of students split a body left and right to work on it.

“It is like eight times the amount of exposure than you would get in a traditional cadaver lab,” Dr. Mourad said.

The Anatomage table allows students to visualize human anatomy exactly as they would on a fresh cadaver. Each table features fully interactive individual body parts and organs that have been reconstructed from high-resolution photographic images using 3D technology.

“This is a much more interactive, much more anatomically correct experience,” Dr. Mourad said. “It is not subject to the variability of the person dissecting. In medical school, we had problems were someone would cut the nerve or cut the artery as they are dissecting and then that was it. It was gone.”

Now, if students mess up, they back out of the program and start over, he noted.

“This provides a much more streamlined experience for all of the students, certainly much cleaner and certainly much more accessible,” he said. “The images are very, very high quality. You also have the benefit of having different body types, meaning men and women, Asian and Caucasian, loading on the same table.”

The 31 students now beginning the third cohort of classes were chosen from more than 250 applicants and 90 finalists for the PA slots. They should graduate from the program in May 2025. The first cohort of students are completing their clinical rotations this semester and are slated to graduate in May. The second cohort will receive their white coats in March and graduate in May 2024.