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After years of teaching gynecological surgery to medical students and residents, LeRoy Heinrichs decided to find a better way for students to prepare for real procedures. Frustrated by a lack of teaching tools beyond videotapes and diagrams, Heinrichs took matters into his own hands. In 1993, he began developing a 3-D model of a woman's pelvis.

Last month, Stanford University Medical Media and Information Technologies was honored for its accomplishments in using computer-based tools, such as this model, to improve medical education. The SUMMIT team, including Heinrichs, was presented with the eighth annual Satava Award during the Medicine Meets Virtual Reality conference, an international forum for physicians, computer scientists and educators to present research on data-centered solutions to health care problems.

"This award is very significant for SUMMIT," said Heinrichs, professor emeritus of gynecology and obstetrics. "It recognizes its leadership in the area of surgical simulation and it validates our 10-year vision."

SUMMIT is a research and development center that uses information technology for medical and life-sciences education. Heinrichs first became involved with the group in the early 1990s after attending a medicine/virtual reality conference and getting the idea to create a 3-D model from unused slice images found in the anatomy lab. He turned to Parvati Dev, director of SUMMIT, for guidance and began using software to create the model. He dubbed his finished product Lucy 2.0.

Lucy 2.0, which was recently refined to include more anatomical detail and renamed Lucy 2.6, provides an in-depth, digitized view of the pelvic region. It is used in teaching, research and the development of surgical simulators, including one device that simulates pelvic endoscopic surgery. Heinrichs hopes that he will soon be able to use these simulators as tools for teaching the fundamentals of surgery and to use the Internet 2 - a new high-bandwidth Internet - to widely distribute the images.

Heinrichs, who was singled out by award presenters for his successes in using virtual reality as a surgical training aid, is the first person in the field of gynecology and obstetrics to receive the Satava Award. A former department chair, Heinrichs is known as a champion of pelviscopic surgery at Stanford, where he has been on the faculty since 1976.