This is a 3D animation developed for midwifery students to improve their understanding of the cardinal movements of labour. This project was a collaborative effort between myself, Caite Miller, Katherine Herring and Charita Goyal, along with the Hackspace for Innovation and Visualization in Education (The HIVE) and Midwifery Program at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Currently, this animation is being integrated into the Pocket Pelvis augmented reality (AR) mobile application, a unique educational tool developed by The HIVE at UBC that will provide students with a hands-on, interactive learning experience.
Poster presented at Anatomy Connected 2024 – an annual meeting hosted by the American Association for Anatomy
Midwifery students must gain a deep understanding of the cardinal movements of labour and the ability to relate haptic feedback from the fontanelles to the fetal position in the maternal pelvis, a skill difficult to teach through 2D media. Existing 3D animations of the cardinal movements often depict the supine birth position, making it difficult for students to conceptualize the cardinal movements in other birth positions. To address these gaps, the primary goal of this project was to develop a 3D animation of a fetus progressing through the cardinal movements in the common left occiput anterior (LOA) fetal position, emphasizing their spatial relation to the pelvis in an upright birth position.
After sufficient research had been conducted, I was responsible for co-writing the storyboard and developing 3D animatics for the animation. These steps were crucial in mapping out the sequence of events during each cardinal movement, with attention to details such as the direction of rotation and amount of descent at each stage. To aid in better communication with our content expert, we developed our storyboard panels depicting the cardinal movements in three different views (anterior, inferior and lateral) so that we could obtain accurate feedback that helped deepen our understanding of the subject matter, as well as streamline our animation process during the posing stage later.
Our team started this project with basic materials from the HIVE. This included a basic fetus, pelvis, and skull model, which all had to be modified before using them in our animation. The skull had to be re-modelled and re-sculpted in particular for the addition of the fontanelles and sutures, and the fetus had to be re-sculpted for realistic facial features.
While model sculpting was in progress, we developed a 3D animatic using a simplified model to plan the animation speed and pathway. This was a pivotal step that kick started our transition from 2D to 3D and helped us identify potential issues before proceeding with the labor-intensive animation phase.
After sculpting has been completed, I was responsible for rigging the baby model so that it is poseable in 3D space. During this step, it was important to ensure that the rig can accommodate all key movements during labour, including those in physiological breech births, without distortion. This was done to ensure that future developers will be able to pose the baby as needed without issues when creating new animations with the model.
Once the baby was fully rigged and poseable, our team went on to pose the baby as outlined in our storyboard panels and strung these poses together to animate the sequence of movements in Blender. While animating, we referred back to our earlier 3D animatic to ensure that the pacing and descent at each movement matched what our client has approved.
As this animation will be integrated into a learning tool for midwifery students, our design choices were thoughtfully made to prioritize features that provide the best learning experience. In our team, I was responsible for user experience (UX) design and UX testing.
Our team polled a cohort of students to explore what features they believe best support their learning of anatomical concepts in a three-dimensional animation. Results from this poll gave us insights on user needs and helped inform our design decisions.
Aside from the implementation of labels, camera zooms and highlights that bring attention to important information in the animation, object transparency was also a major feature added to enhance the learning experience.
The pelvis features a level of transparency, allowing the fetus to be viewed clearly at all angles without obstruction. Maximizing visibility of the fetus can help students identify and understand its position in relation to the pelvis during each cardinal movement more easily. Similarly, a gradient of transparency was applied to the head to reveal the highlighted fontanelles underneath. A clear view of these critical landmarks will aid the midwives’ understanding of fetal orientation during delivery further.
User testing sessions during our iterative prototyping process validated these design choices as useful features for student learning.
Future development by The HIVE at UBC involves integrating the current 3D animation into the Pocket Pelvis AR mobile application, allowing students to learn through hands-on immersive experiences. The 3D assets from the present animation can be reused and adapted to potentially create animations that visualize the typical movements of labour in other birth positions, including physiological breech presentations, therefore increasing diversity of material for students to learn from. By integrating a library of anatomically accurate 3D animations with user-controlled AR structures and visual cues that can be toggled, this current project can potentially develop into an inclusive, interactive user experience that is an essential tool for midwifery students to gain a deep understanding of the delivery process.
