TVASurg’s NTUH Exhibition: Vision and Themes

This past December, the TVASurg Team traveled to Taiwan to present our work at National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH). The invitation came from NTUH’s newly established Medical Visualization Center, an initiative dedicated to advancing the field in Asia.

Alongside our presentations and workshops on visualization tools in surgical education, we also hosted our first international exhibition. Installed in a prominent hallway near NTUH’s main meeting rooms, one of the hospital’s highest-traffic areas, the exhibition created meaningful opportunities to engage medical professionals in conversation.

In this post, we'll walk you through the vision and themes that shaped the exhibition.

The elevator doors slide open and you are immediately greeted with a welcome and invitation from TVASurg!

On the wall facing the elevators, where we expected the most foot traffic, we carefully selected images to highlight each of the main chapters from our online video atlas: Hepato-pancreato-biliary, Obstetrics, Head and Neck, Laparoscopy, Transplant, Gynecology, Surgical Techniques, Robotics, Breast Oncology, Gynecologic Oncology, and Patient Education.

This wall provides an overview of our body of work, giving viewers an immediate sense of the wide range of surgical topics and visual approaches that define our atlas.

As medical illustrators, we often encounter similar topics or subject matter, but with communication goals towards different audiences. One surgical procedure or medical situation can harbour countless communication needs and challenges.

This wall revolves around one single surgical procedure—the Whipple—and is divided into three sections.

Procedure: The middle section displays the variations of the Whipple procedure, from a simple pancreatico-duodenectomy, to complex cases involving multi-visceral resections.

Surgical Techniques: Another section zooms in on a highly technical step in the procedure, the pancreatico-jejunostomy, and illustrates different surgeons’ approach.

Patient Education: We shift gears in the final section to cover patients’ perspectives for the procedure, and focus on preparation and recovery aspects.

When people see the finished animation, they rarely appreciate the depth of work behind it. To offer a glimpse into the creative process of medical illustrators, we dedicated an entire wall to our workflow.

Visitors move through the production journey from start to finish. Each stage is presented with a top panel outlining key considerations, accompanied by two panels below showing examples in action. The process begins with research, moves through surgical filming and 3D modeling, and culminates in animation and final compositing.

Rather than focusing on technical minutiae, we emphasized how we ensure medical accuracy and apply design principles to clarify key teaching points. We also highlighted the collaborative nature of our work, showing how medical professionals can engage with and apply visualization in their own practice.

Our team often encounters questions on efficacy and reception of our projects, and we wanted to take the opportunity to present data that measures the impact of our content. These range from our global website traffic, to thoughtful comments left from our viewers, as well as collaborative projects that were initiated through social media conversations.

Moreover, we wanted to demonstrate the value of visual communication within institutional initiatives. Our team was heavily involved in the Stop-the-POP campaign held by our institution, creating custom-made 2D animations and clearly designed posters, postcards and stickers, all tailored to encourage patients to actively take steps to prevent pneumonia after their surgery. The data collected pre- and post-launch of the videos serves as an encouraging indication of the campaign’s success, and would hopefully inspire institutions around the world to embrace visual communication talents as an effective tool for communication and knowledge translation initiatives.