3D head and neck anatomy with special senses and basic neuroanatomy (DVD-ROM)

  • B. Berkovitz,
  • C. Kirsch,
  • B. J. Moxham,
  • G. Alusi &
  • T. Cheeseman
UK: Primal Pictures Ltd price £159.00 ISBN 9781904369691 | ISBN: 978-1-9043-6969-1

Anyone tempted to pay out a lot of money has a right to expect a lot of anatomy and that is what this DVD contains. Using computerised reconstructions from slice dissections, several views of the head and neck, brain and special senses are available that can be rotated through 360° or stripped layer by layer. Click the pointer over any structure and a description in traditional anatomy textbook style appears at the side of the image.

There are some serious errors; the TMJ articular cartilages are labelled as hyaline cartilage and the oral cavity is lined by respiratory mucosa to name just a couple of screamers I came across. The nerves and vasculature are shown in high detail — some of the nerve views look like a bowl of vermicelli tipped over a skull and are extremely difficult to unravel. An editorial deletion of some of the minor branches would make these views much more useful. The main limitation to these views is the lack of internal detail of the mouth, nose or larynx.

MRI scans can be followed sequentially in all three planes accompanied by an anatomical reconstruction. A selection of slides includes anatomy illustrations (textbook derived), clinical topics (a few gory pictures), MRI and absolutely stunning dissections. Each dissection is accompanied by a list of structures; a mouse click highlights the structure. Unfortunately the labels are not linked to the descriptions accompanying the reconstructions. There are also some movie clips, mainly of muscle actions. Search facilities enable the user to find structures in any part of the package and hyperlinks in the descriptions lead to other pictures of the same thing. There are quizzes in either 'label or identify' or 'true-false' format. The MCQ section has many ambiguous questions and many questions in both sections are anatomical trivial pursuits with a vengeance. They really do need a very heavy editorial hand to get the questions in proportion and worded unambiguously.

For the price of this DVD you could buy four or five anatomy textbooks or atlases, so is it value for money? Most textbooks will give added value not found on the DVD in the form of description of complex functions such as mastication or swallowing, an overview of structures as well as clinical relevance, which is lacking in this DVD. These days, many textbooks have CDs or access to publishers' websites for additional pictures. The price is not right for students and even for MFDS candidates a textbook and atlas would be better value until Primal have refined their product considerably.