Students' attitudes towards body image donation for 3D printing

Anatomy education has been evolving rapidly in recent years and one of its main features has been the utilisation of new technologies. In both educational and financial terms, among the most promising of these technologies is 3D printing (McMenamin et al., 2014). While the technical aspects of printing have been investigated considerably in the last few years, very little attention has been paid to the legal and ethical aspects of it (Cornwall, 2016). One might assume that the images of anatomical structures for 3D printing (both living and dead) are to be used only if informed consent was obtained. If that is the case than the willingness of different populations towards donation of body images for educational purposes is of significant interest. These attitudes, however, have not been investigated yet. The aim of this study was to investigate the attitudes of first year anatomy students towards image donation and contrast them with their attitudes towards whole body donation for anatomy education