HoloLens at Case Western Reserve: HoloAnatomy takes anatomy online

A session at the 2020 Games for Change festival, Remote Learning with Mixed Reality, covered the move. It was led by Dan Ayoub, General Manager for Education at Microsoft, and Mark Griswold, a professor at Case Western Reserve University. Griswold is the Pavey Family Designated Professor of Innovative Imaging, Professor of Radiology and Director of MRI Research, and is Faculty Director of the university's Interactive Commons, the group behind HoloAnatomy. He is also known for developing Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting, a quantitative form of MRI.

The session addressed the challenges and the eventual success of going remote with HoloLens, and how the technology could help learners remotely and in the classroom.

Before the pandemic, students put on headsets and learned anatomy together in one room on campus. When classes moved online, the university shipped 185 HoloLens headsets to its first-year medical students so that the course could continue. Professor Susanne Wish-Baratz taught the first remote HoloAnatomy class in late March.

The remote use of HoloAnatomy that began in late March was believed to be the first of its kind in the world. Griswold called the crisis a chance to show that HoloLens education could extend its reach. Every student received a headset, so the class could keep working with the same software.

The pattern was simple: HoloLens at Case Western carried the 3D anatomy course to students in separate places.

The HoloAnatomy page at case.edu/holoanatomy is online in November 2026. It describes the HoloAnatomy Software Suite as created by Case Western Reserve University's Interactive Commons and born from the plans of the university and Cleveland Clinic for a joint Health Education Campus. It offers the software for teaching human anatomy without a cadaver, for in-class and remote use.

The page says students can learn anatomy anywhere in the world, in class or remotely, with on-demand access to 3D anatomy, and it cites peer-reviewed publications for the suite's effectiveness without giving details. It marks the software as patent pending, which makes the approach of HoloLens at Case Western a product and not only a pandemic stopgap.

Distribution has moved: the page says AlensiaXR now brings the platform to learners worldwide and links to alensiaxr.com. Image captions refer to HoloLens 2. The page lists no price, purchase option or system requirements, so those are not stated here.