Purpose
Facial anatomy is a critical component of medical education, playing a foundational role in various specialties such as plastic and craniomaxillofacial surgery, ophthalmology, and otolaryngology. The potential of virtual reality (VR) in teaching anatomy, particularly complex structures like the human face has been increasingly recognized as a means of supplementing the traditional method of cadaver-based dissection. In our work, we created a video exploring the muscles of facial expressions with VR and validated its effectiveness with students at an engineering-based medical school, Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CIMED) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Methods
We utilized the Meta Quest VR headset and the 3D Organon XR Anatomy application to create the anatomical visualizations. The VR content displayed within the headset was cast to an external device to facilitate recording.

Results
The video was a total of 7 minutes long and included facial expressions such as eye blinking, blowing out cheeks, kissing, frowning, and pouting. Each muscle of every facial expression was illustrated both as a static view of the muscle in relation to the position of other facial muscles and as an animation of muscle movement. To keep the viewer engaged, examples of facial expressions from movies, such as Spider-Man and Mrs. Doubtfire, were placed alongside the VR animation.

Conclusion
To assess the effectiveness of the video, we designed a Likert scale survey to be distributed to the classes at CIMED. Following their interaction with the video, survey responses will be collected electronically and analyzed to identify trends in perceived educational value. The goal of our work is to encourage greater integration of VR in medical education and to promote the continued creation of videos covering additional anatomical regions beyond the face.