lecturer University of Saskatchewan Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Abstract Body : Introduction & Objectives: Our hypothesis is that a flexible new method of schematic (as opposed to pictorial) representation, inspired by the “wiring diagrams” used by electricians and the “point-and-line labels” used in geometry, can help students better visualize branching vessels, and more easily learn and remember their names.
We hope that this new kind of visualization will not only reduce the need for brute memorization, by emphasizing the logical relationships between segments of the schematized vessel systems, but also offer possible ways to improve the nomenclature.
Methods: We apply our hypothesis to several complex vascular systems (such as the hepatic portal vein and its major variants) in order to test its basic capabilities and flexibilities when applied to vessel names in the real world.
Results: The schematizations shown in our poster illustrate both the range of complexities our method is capable of depicting, and its flexibility in helping students visualize the various relationships between vessels (both “standard” and variant), and between the vessels and their names.
Conclusion: Nomenclatural problems are amenable to our schematizations, although each vascular system presented requires its own specific modifications.
Significance/Implication: The immediate significance of our proposed method is its potential application to the currently burgeoning subfield of “variant anatomy:” by efficiently labeling arterial branches, we provide a kind of “scaffold” on which useful names for variant structures might eventually be built.
In the longer term, necessarily adapted versions of the basic idea should help in the labelling of other “branching” systems (perhaps muscles & nerves, for example), and maybe even of other systems whose organization is analogous to branching (the bones of the wrist, hand, and fingers, for example). Finally, it may be that the real triumph of the “wiring diagram” approach will be in the realm of neuroanatomy.
