With the help of two Cornell engineering and architecture students, Prof. Dan Fletcher, emergency and critical care, recently developed an automated dog manikin — a model for teaching anatomy and surgical procedures — that may one day teach veterinarians and dog owners about how to better handle canine medical emergencies.

Fletcher, who said he has been working on the project since early 2009, took technologies normally found in human body simulators and used them in a dog manikin.

The new manikins will be invaluable to both veterinary students and pet owners, who opt to take pet safety classes, Fletcher said, because it will allow them to learn accurate ways to respond to health issues on a life-like canine model.

“Allowing them to practice these skills for the first time on actual patients in the teaching hospital is difficult because critically ill patients are very fragile and dynamic, and delays in treatment can be life threatening. Using the simulator, we can allow veterinary students to practice treating these types of patients without risk to the animals,” Fletcher said.

Fletcher was first introduced to this idea when he attended a meeting of the Society of Critical Care Medicine in January 2009. His project was later chosen by the Cornell Faculty Innovation in Teaching program, which funded the costs for the simulator.

The automated dog manikin itself was first developed by examining both a human patient simulator and a canine CPR training manikin, then retrofitting the parts from the human simulator into that of the dog. A number of speakers and actuators inside the dog manikin “emit heart and lung sounds, and create pulses that can be felt, [while] a balloon within the chest cavity simulates chest movements to mimic spontaneous breathing,” according to a University statement.

Roberta Militello grad, the architecture student who has been working on the project, said the simulator also involved the revolutionary use of 3D digital work and prototyping with a CT scanner. By utilizing the CT scanner, Militello was able to look at the 3D forms of different parts of the model as they were building it.

“[The prototype] has some anatomical features that are important for the students to feel when they are manipulating and working with the simulator. [Therefore], we treated this thing as though we were creating forms true to life,” Militello said.

Fletcher said student feedback regarding the manikin has been positive and added that he is currently working on a more life-like second generation canine model. He also has plans to expand the project by creating a cat model and working to make all of the designs more easily replicable so that they can be made available at other institutions nationally and globally.

“We are also working on training programs for military personnel and public safety officers, [such as] police, firefighters, etc., who handle working dogs who might become injured in the field,” Fletcher said.