Digital art - a useful tool for medical professionals to create medical illustrations

Abstract

Illustrations are routinely used in medicine for teaching, communication, record keeping, research and publication purposes. Many medical professionals including the author prefer to create their own medical illustrations for use in presentations and publications. With the advent of digital media, it has become easier to create good quality illustrations even for those with limited artistic skills including the author. This article describes the author's experience with creating medical illustrations using digital media and discusses the benefits of the new technology. A few useful tips are also provided for medical professionals who would be interested in exploring the option of creating their own illustrations using digital tools.

A Simple Method for Creating Medical Illustrations Using Tablets

“…While the importance of preoperative treatment planning has been widely recognized, a detailed description of intraoperative findings using easy-to-understand illustrations also has pivotal roles and may contribute to improving treatment quality. Furthermore, the role of medical illustration in surgical records is to record surgical information, improve one’s surgical skills, and educate young doctors [ 1 , 2 ]. However, we believe it is challenging for beginners to create medical illustrations from a blank sheet of paper.…”

“…However, we believe it is challenging for beginners to create medical illustrations from a blank sheet of paper. The computer-assisted illustration technique not only saves time but also provides accurate and easy-to-understand medical illustrations [ 2 ]. The previous reports include methods of converting radiologic images to line art using photo editing software and digitization of hand drawings [ 1 , 2 ].…”

“…One of the major tablets and stylus pen are iPad™ with Apple Pencil™ (Apple, Cupertino, CA, USA). Another option is a detachable keyboard or a tablet computer, such as Microsoft Surface Pro with a digital pressure-sensitive pen called Surface Pen (Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, USA) [ 2 ].…”

Necessity of professional medical illustration for increasing the value of the journal

“…Good medical illustrations can improve the quality of a research paper by efficiently conveying content to the readers [ 8 , 9 ]. When reviewing the articles published in the Korean Journal of Pain in 2023 (including review articles, clinical research articles, and experimental research articles only), illustrations, except graphs or charts, were found in 7.9% of the articles (3 out of 38).…”

Training Mode and Development Strategy of College Educational Talents Based on 1+X Digital Creative Modeling

“…The characteristic or fundamental policy of education is to face reality directly. If these are lost, vocational education will deviate from its course [5][6]. Due to the lack of industry research in many colleges and universities, and some teachers do not pay attention to professional development, the technology taught is outdated and cannot adapt to the ever-changing changes in science and technology [7][8].…”