New learning possibilities at Kolmården Animal and Wildlife Park

Interspectral’s Inside Explorer software is enabling visitors at Kolmården Animal and Wildlife Park in Sweden to explore and learn about animals in a new and intuitive way.

The Park is one of the most popular visitor attractions in the Nordic countries, and is also an important centre for scientific research. It is now using Inside Explorer and a database of 3D CT (X-ray) scanned animals to improve its visitor experience. The database has been developed in collaboration between researchers at Kolmården and Center for Medical Image Science and Visualization (CMIV).

Users have scans from a large number of animals available to them, for example, a seal, a lion, a bear to name a few. The possibilities are vast, and the impact on the learning experience it offers is greatly enhanced.

We will use Inside Explorer to improve the visitor experience. Being able to explore real animal anatomy in 3D is an amazing experience and will complement our traditional methods. It will help the visitors to get a greater understanding and insight into how animals look and function.

Josefin Persson Suorra, Acting Head of Education at Kolmården

For these users exploring animals through touch gestures with 3D visualization is far more realistic, accurate and exciting than using the more traditional illustrations and photographs in books. Using touch screen devices, users can interact with authentic and complex data in an easy and intuitive way. This gives them an in depth insight, leading to new, more accurate ways of understanding and interpreting animal behaviours.

3D visualization technology of this kind has, until recently, mainly been available to advanced research labs and universities. With Inside Explorer It becomes more available and even visitors to an animal park can have access to this cutting edge technology.

The data generated at Kolmården will also be exclusively available to all of Interspectral’s existing and new Inside Explorer customers.  There is potential for other wildlife parks and a range of similar visitor attractions, including aquariums, zoos and natural history museums to enhance visitor experiences through 3D visualization of objects, while also offering a valuable educational resource.