Thesis-details
Overview
 
Augmented Reality Visualization of Human Anatomy for Physiotherapy Education ■
 
Subject ■
As physiotherapy education advances, using Augmented Reality (AR) technology to teach about muscles and bones becomes increasingly valuable. However, many of the current tools for the HoloLens 2 AR headset, such as the HoloAnatomy app [1] and DynamicAnatomy [2], are proprietary and expensive. This limits their accessibility for students and educators who might not have the budget for such resources.
Kind of work ■
Objective
The proposed research aims to develop an open source HoloLens application for the visualization of muscle and bone anatomy.

Description of Work
- Literature review
- Development of a simple application for anatomy visualization [3,4]. The user interface should allow the manipulation (rotation, translation, and zooming) of 3D muscle and bone holograms.
- Development of an advanced feature to overlay the holograms on top of a human body. This part of the thesis will rely on a pre-existing method developed by our team for tracking the motion of a person using the HoloLens 2 [5].
Framework of the Thesis ■
References
[1] Case Western Reserve University. (2023). HoloAnatomy® Software Suite. Interactive Commons. Retrieved from https://interactivecommons.org/what-we-do/our-projects/holoanatomy/
[2] Leiden University. (n.d.). XR: Extended Reality at Leiden University. Leiden Learning Innovation. Retrieved from https://www.leidenlearninginnovation.org/xr/ [3] Choi SY, Choi DH, Cho SH, Ahn SH, Han SH (2025). Anatomy education potential of the first digital twin of a Korean cadaver. PLoS ONE 20(3): e0305679.
[4] Shishkov, A., & Kolmanic, S. (2023). Progressive Education: Augmented Reality Visualization of Human Anatomy on Hololens 2. In HCI-SI.
[5] Zaccardi S. et al. (2025). HoloMoCap: Real-Time Clinical Motion Capture with HoloLens 2. Proc. IEEE AIxVR 2025.
Expected Student Profile ■
Programming experience in Python and C#/C++ is required.
Experience with Unity gaming development software is preferred.
The candidate should be interested in computer vision and augmented reality.