By Karen Villarreal

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TEXAS – JUNE 7, 2023 – “The toe bone’s connected to the …”

A physician professor in the UTRGV School of Podiatric Medicine has gone back to the drawing board in an effort to better educate students about the anatomical structures of the leg, ankle and foot.

Dr. Hooman Mir, DPM, MSci, FAPWCA, recently completed a catalog of more than 700 medical illustrations, after students shared their difficulties studying from existing diagrams.

“A medical illustration is like a road map that tells the story of that structure,” said Mir, an assistant professor of medicine. “As a physician anatomist, you want to be able to think about the relationships between the structures.”

Mir began the more than 800-hour project of hand-creating full-color, 8K resolution images to help students at the UTRGV School of Podiatric Medicine prepare for their board exams and future careers. (UTRGV Photo)

There is a need for updated podiatric illustrations, he said, as students have been working from mostly black-and-white anatomy materials, and those were created to be viewed on the lower resolution electronic monitors of the past.

“Almost all the older images are ultimately not useful as modern learning tools,” Mir said. “I’ve seen students drawing their own copies, trying to color and label them.”

Inspired by Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, which developed its own surgical dissection manuals, Mir began the more than 800-hour project of hand-creating full-color, 8K resolution images to help students at the UTRGV School of Podiatric Medicine prepare for their board exams and future careers.

ILLUSTRATE TO EDUCATE

Mir said he had to develop new creative skills to help fill the void in the older educational materials.

“A medical illustration is like a road map that tells the story of that structure,” said Mir. “As a physician anatomist, you want to be able to think about the relationships between the structures.” (UTRGV Photo by David Pike)

“You don’t see many of these images out there. Medical illustrations are expensive and difficult to commission,” he said. “It takes an artist who has medical-level knowledge of clinical and surgical anatomy.”

By his own admission, Mir is not an artist – but with his years of surgical and teaching experience, he knew what would be useful in a medical education illustration.

Learning to use digital illustration software from online tutorials, Mir custom-made each diagram to fulfill specific learning objectives, giving meticulous consideration to accuracy.

Over the course of eight months, he designed and compared his 700 images to many reference books, reevaluating the annotations and labeling of the anatomical structures for clarity – and began sharing them with his students.

Isabella Strash, a member of the first cohort of the UTRGV School of Podiatric Medicine, said the illustrations have enhanced her understanding of the anatomy of the foot and ankle.

“The color coding and simplified illustrations allow me to easily recall their associated structures,” Strash said. 

Mir said he hopes the illustrations help podiatry students and surgical residents enjoy the learning process as they gain an even deeper understanding of podiatric anatomy. He is exploring the copyright process with UTRGV in hopes that the illustrations can be shared with other entities in the future.

“They will need this knowledge when they begin their foot and ankle surgical practices after graduation,” he said.  “If we step out of the box, we can create something lifechanging, in terms of the educational process.”

UTRGV School of Podiatric Medicine first-year students Isabella Strash, Garrett Edwards and Vanessa Cortez using Dr. Hooman Mir's illustrations during a study group session. (Courtesy Photo)