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Abstract Recent technological advancements have revolutionized medical education, leading to a decline in traditional cadaver dissection. This study aims to investigate the academic performance and satisfaction of students by comparing the effectiveness of virtual and cadaver dissections. This study involved 154 first-year medical students who participated in Human Anatomy and Neuroanatomy laboratories. A curriculum using head-mounted displays (HMDs), life-sized touchscreens, and tablets, was developed. Through crossover randomized controlled trials, students were randomly assigned to virtual (virtual dissection à cadaver dissection) or cadaver (cadaver dissection à virtual dissection) groups. Data collected evaluated academic performance and student satisfaction through quizzes and surveys. In the Human Anatomy laboratory, the cadaver group for each class differed in heart extraction, dissection, and observation. In observation class, the virtual group had a significantly higher quiz score than the cadaver group. In other classes, no significant differences were observed. Compared to the cadaver, satisfaction was significantly higher for HMD (esthetics and immersion), life-size touchscreen (esthetics, understanding of the concept, and spatial ability), and tablets (esthetics, understanding of the concept, spatial ability, and continuous use intention). In the Neuroanatomy laboratory, the virtual group showed significantly higher quiz scores than the cadaver group. Compared to using cadavers, tablets showed a significantly higher satisfaction for esthetics, understanding of the concept, and spatial ability. These findings indicate that virtual dissection can supplement or replace cadaver dissections in medical education. This study is innovative in that it successfully delivered scenario-based virtual content and validated the efficacy in academic performance and satisfaction when using virtual devices compared to handling cadavers. Trial registration: This research has been registered in the Clinical Research Information Service (CRIS, https: //cris. nih. go. kr/cris/search/detailSearch. do? searchₗang=E&focus=reset₁2&searchₚage=L&pageSize=10&page=undefined&seq=26002&status=5&seqgroup=26002) with registration number "KCT0009075" and registration date "27/12/2023".
Yun et al. (Sat,) studied this question.