Lonie Salkowski, MD, PhD brings three qualities to the world of radiology education: passion, creativity and a spirit of intellectual generosity. Through her innovative approaches to curriculum development, she is deeply committed to refining the best practices for teaching students and sharing her insights with fellow educators, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
Dr. Salkowski began her educational path in science earning a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from Mount Mary College in 1986. She earned her medical degree at the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1991, where she later completed a breast imaging fellowship in 1998. While studying radiology, she saw how steep the learning curve could be.
“The first time you’re looking at medical images, it’s a huge jump to take what you learned in anatomy and apply it to the X-ray,” she said.
Dr. Salkowski joined the University of Wisconsin Department of Radiology as a faculty member in 2005. She enrolled in the UW School of Education soon after and earned her master of science in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis in 2013 and then her doctorate in Curriculum and Instruction in 2017. Dr. Salkowski traces her interest in learning and education during her time as a medical student.
“I realized that everybody learned differently,” Dr. Salkowski recalled. “Some caught on really fast, and some took a little bit longer. I started thinking, ‘why did that person do it so efficiently, and why is that person struggling?’”
After earning her master’s and doctorate, Dr. Salkowski explored new ways to teach to help those who struggled with learning, including through games. She co-designed Anatomy Pro-Am, a Facebook game that taught anatomy, biomedical imaging and cancer treatment, while also helping medical professionals improve treatment strategies for patients.
She collaborated with colleagues from across the university, including R. Benjamin Shapiro of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery; Kurt D Squire, a former digital media professor; and Rock Mackie, a professor of medical physics. Together, they tackled a common challenge: students struggling to connect two-dimensional diagrams with three-dimensional anatomy. Their efforts expanded into several projects, including a simulation lab funded by a grant from the Radiological Society of North America’s Research & Education (RSNA) Foundation.
The original version of the lab allowed users to guide a CT scan of the human torso with a handheld probe and view real-time images on an iPad. Dr. Salkowski utilized the lab in a study researching how novices and experts interpret radiology images. The goal of the project was to find ways to improve how students achieve expertise in the field of radiology.
As technology evolved, the simulation lab has also undergone changes. Today, the torso is gone and has been replaced with several computer stations and a pair of special glasses that can track the user’s eye movements while they review cases. This allows the system to follow exactly how the learner examines images of breast scans.
“In real time, the work we’re doing is giving us some idea of how residents are processing mammograms,” Dr. Salkowski explained. “We can turn that knowledge back into improving how we teach them.”
In addition to scientific research, Dr. Salkowski has also shared her expertise through textbooks. She co-authored several editions of Weir & Abrahams’ Imaging Atlas of Human Anatomy, even reaching international audiences with translations in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
Her contributions to the textbook have earned recognition from The British Medical Association, including the honor of Highly Commended Title in the Basic and Clinical Science category for the fifth edition of Weir & Abrahams’ Imaging Atlas of Human Anatomy. In 2021, Dr. Salkowski received the Medical Book Award in the same category for the sixth edition of the textbook.
For Dr. Salkowski, her work in research and education is both a profession and a passion, that keeps evolving.
“You can’t stay in an old format just because you want to,” Dr. Salkowski said. “You have to adapt, and I like using technology to make that possible.”