Female reproductive system anatomy

The female body is incredibly complex — just ask your doctor. Especially the female urinary system, which shows many anatomical evolutions, and most of the female reproductive organs are located in the body and cannot be seen with the naked eye. This presents trainee doctors with a daunting challenge: how to conduct the dreaded gynecological examination.

Although an influential health panel recently recommended that healthy women do not need a comprehensive pelvic exam every year, many doctors still believe that this annual exam is an important opportunity to detect cancer, cysts, fibroids and other conditions. Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have created a mechanical pelvis that allows clinicians to learn by "seeing" women's bodies, so they can be more confident when examining real patients lying on gynecological examination tables.

If the researchers have their way, their fun-looking silicone female bottoms could help novice doctors and nurses perform vaginal examinations more quickly. It can also make women who are examined by trainee doctors for the first time more comfortable. The team’s project involved 3D imaging and using haptic technology to simulate the feel of the hand – a complex project that compares to simulating a complex aspect of human anatomy.

But even with the use of cutting-edge technology, this is still a difficult undertaking. The research team has been working on this project for more than five years, but they found that we still have a lot to learn about the female body. “It’s fascinating, it really is,” said Fernando Bello, professor of computational and simulation research in surgery, who led the entire team. “We’ve been developing this project for years, but it still feels like we’ve just touched on it in many ways.”

It all starts with a section of the duodenum. About seven years ago, Bello's team began developing a robotic male colonoscopy to help clinicians train to perform prostate exams. It is the test that men dread the most, and it is not a piece of cake for clinicians, doctors and nurses. With their model, the researchers hope to help teach students to differentiate the "hard and lumpy" feeling of a diseased prostate from that of a healthy prostate, making the doctor-patient relationship easier for both parties.