The thing I love most about working as an Educational Media producer is getting the opportunity to work on a wide variety of subjects that I might not otherwise have taken the time to look into. 

I have broken a few bones in my life, and seen my share of X-ray images. I imagine you are familiar with an X-ray. Its a black, white and gray blob, that to the trained professional can reveal a lot about what is happening inside your body. 

We were fortunate recently to work on a series of videos that described how X-rays work, and how to read X-rays. The thing I enjoyed most about this project was the opportunity this offered for us to do something with video that we had not done before. 

X-ray’s as it turns out, are a 2 dimensional representation of 3-dimensional space. In order to really explain what is being shown on the X-ray, we wanted to show a 3 dimensional skeleton; one that would move and rotate to give a better sense of the depth, and seeing the ‘behind’ bones.

But creating the videos was about more than just finding a skeleton model online that would work with our software, while being anatomically correct enough to show accurate information. 

The scripts themselves were dense, medical language. I understand it makes perfect sense to those who are trained, but on my first listen through I felt somewhat lost. 

For example: 

“Start anteriorly at the humeral shaft superiorly, run down the cortex. Just above the humeral condyles you will observed that the cortical outline divides into two. A less dense cortical outline runs anteriorly, which runs into the lateral condyle of the humerus and the capitulum.”

Ah. Of course. Condyles Anteriorly in the Cortical….

Luckily, we were able to receive detailed guidance from the Academic to help us understand what exactly this meant. 

It was, I believe, a brilliant fusion of two areas of expertise. The LIH Ed Media team brought the capacity to create a 3-dimensional animation of a human skeleton, and our Academic partner brought the subject matter expertise. 

Highlighting features across 2D and 3D

Individually, we could not have achieved the results that we achieved together as a partnership. 

I still cannot read an X-ray. But I learned enough to understand how and why the experts can. 

If you would like to work with us to create something new and exciting for your students, contact us today via lih-sst@mq.edu.au

Posted by Nathan Sollars

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