There’s a bit of a learning curve when it comes to picking up Anki but it’s definitely worth it. Download the app (free) and you’ve thousands of user-generated study decks for free at your fingertips. There’s simply no better way of studying than with digital flashcards.
Thankfully the Anki community is fantastic when it comes to comprehensive anatomy decks. Using the excellent r/medicalschoolanki as a source, here’s a round up of the seven best of them.
The Best Anatomy Anki Decks
The 7 decks we’ll be looking at are:
- Anatoking
- Apple’s Neuroanatomy
- Dope Anatomy
- Dorian’s Anatomy
- Ranatomy
- Complete UMich Cadaver
- Hoop’s Anatomy Lab
You’ll find these decks cover a range of basic, pre-med and medical school anatomy. While others have a more specialised focus; anatomy labs, neuroanatomy etc.
Note: I’ve also listed plugins (you can download these free via search in the app), file sizes and the years of upload too. Making it easier for you to find exactly what you need.
Anatoking
| Deck Type: | Anatomy Lab |
| Cards: | 4773 |
| Card Format: | Image Occlusion, Basic |
| Year of Upload: | 2020 |
| Required Plugins: | Image Occlusion, Hierarchical Tags 2 |
| Download Size: | 1.3 Gb |
Anatoking is a great deck for mastering one of the trickiest of disciplines; anatomy lab.
Created in October of 2020, this deck builds on basic, advanced and medical school anatomy classes (and is tagged as such for your benefit).
Sources used to build the Anatoking deck include Colored Atlas of Anatomy (Rohen’s), Pocket Atlas of Human Anatomy and VH Dissector.
You can check out my general guide for tips on how to study for anatomy practical (11 best ways) here.
This deck covers:
- All the major structures
- Every muscle
- Origins, insertions, actions and innervation
Where it might be a bit sparse is neuroanatomy. There are a few cards omitted from the deck due to copyright issues.
What makes this deck great is its formatting. Each card highlights the number of a structure on the front side of a card. Saving you time scanning the photo to find the number in question. Here’s how that looks…
![r/medicalschoolanki - AnatoKing v1 [King of Anatomy Decks]](https://preview.redd.it/troea0drlbu51.png?width=3358&format=png&auto=webp&s=bfa8a4f10ddd57bbba716215d44f29027a6e187a)
This differs from the Dope Anatomy deck by offering several new cards testing different structures. The deck creator also suggests new updates (including a JPEG to PNG image conversion to save space) are on the way.
Possibly too detailed for USMLE Step 1 but great for general MBBS anatomy courses.
Apple’s Neuroanatomy
| Deck Type: | Neuroanatomy |
| Cards: | 180 |
| Card Format: | Image Occlusion, Basic |
| Year of Upload: | 2019 |
| Required Plugins: | Image Occlusion, Hierarchical Tags 2 |
| Download Size: | 105 Mb |
Apple’s Neuroanatomy is a very short yet effective deck. It’s based on the Interactive Neuroanatomy Atlas from Colombia University and includes cards on the brain stem, thalamus and spinal cord.
Unlike the 2D cross-section representations of neuroanatomy that many flashcards use (namely Anking’s deck for Step 1), Apple’s Neuroanatomy uses histological slides and colored highlighting to teach the fundamentals.
According to users of the deck, it’s very centered on the high yield topics from neuro likely to show up on Step1.
It’s tagging system makes it easy to work with too. It looks like this…
Dope Anatomy
| Deck Type: | General Anatomy |
| Cards: | 1128 |
| Card Format: | Image Occlusion, Basic |
| Year of Upload: | 2018 |
| Required Plugins: | Image Occlusion |
| Download Size: | 87 Mb |
Dope Anatomy is considered one of the gold standards when it comes to comprehensive anatomy decks. Actually part of a three deck series with Medical Science and Clinical Medicine, the anatomy component is an update of the earlier Netter anatomy deck (no longer available).
It’s well worth downloading each part of Dope here as the Medical Science deck has lots of neuroanatomy cards available built off Nolte’s Neuroanatomy and Neuroanatomy Through Clinical Cases. You can search for relevant cards for class and move them into a single Dope-based deck if you think that would help.
There’s also a very helpful update on both the Dope Anatomy and Ranatomy decks that overhauls the tagging system. This makes it much easier to work with sections of anatomy (lower limb: muscles etc) in an order that makes sense to you. That’s available here.
This is the deck I used to ace to anatomy. I can’t recommend it enough!
Dorian’s Anatomy
| Deck Type: | Clinical Anatomy |
| Cards: | 292 |
| Card Format: | Image Occlusion, Cloze, Basic |
| Year of Upload: | 2018 |
| Required Plugins: | Image Occlusion |
| Download Size: | 47 Mb |
I remember using Dorian’s Anatomy deck a couple years back when I was going through my anatomy finals. It’s an amazing resource. Short too at just under 300 cards.
What I enjoyed about was it’s focus on clinical anatomy. Learning about the pathologies that anatomical dysfunction causes, I managed to build a solid foundation on future medical topics using this deck.
All the cards are based on St Matthew’s University School of Medicine 100 Most Important Gross Anatomy Concepts, put together by Dr. Mavrych. You can download this here. Well worth it!
Here’s how the deck looks in action. It’s mostly clozed-format (fill in the gap) style.
A very visual and fun deck to learn very high yield concepts of anatomy in no time at all.
Ranatomy
| Deck Type: | Anatomy Lab |
| Cards: | 1586 |
| Card Format: | Image Occlusion |
| Year of Upload: | 2018 |
| Required Plugins: | Image Occlusion |
| Download Size: | 8.47 Mb |
Rohen’s Atlas is based on the same resource as Anatoking’s deck (Rohen) but is a little more tried and tested – I actually used this myself ahead of my tricky anatomy lab practicals too.
Built on the same formatting (imageocclusion) as the Anettermy deck, estel95 (the creator of this deck), threw it together by taking high-res images of a legally acquired PDF version of the book and categorising it accordingly.
Complete UMich Cadaver
| Deck Type: | Anatomy Lab |
| Cards: | 2992 |
| Card Format: | Image Occlusion |
| Year of Upload: | 2020 |
| Required Plugins: | Image Occlusion |
| Download Size: | 650 Mb |
The perfect deck for learning anatomy online for free (for pre-meds and everyone else), the Complete UMich Cadaver deck is organised by the categorisation over at University of Michican Blue Link Atlas.
A big fan of UMich’s stuff – I use their question banks and pathology stuff all the time – it’s amazing to have a resource like this that you can use to follow along with their content and build your anatomy understanding.
Lovely looking formatting too…
Hoop’s Anatomy Lab
| Deck Type: | Anatomy Lab |
| Cards: | 2329 |
| Card Format: | Image Occlusion |
| Year of Upload: | 2019 |
| Required Plugins: | Image Occlusion |
| Download Size: | 8,47 Mb |
Hoop’s is another gross anatomy lab deck that offers good value except for a comprehensive neuroanatomy section. It’s uses are mainly for surgery rotations (clerkships) and cadaver labs. Not for Step 1 or 2 based study.
Similar to Anatoking, Hoop’s also has numbered structures on its cards that it’ll ask you to name. Unlike Anatoking these aren’t highlighted however so can take a few seconds to scan!
Here’s how Hoops cards look…
Personally I’d go for other decks on this list due to the formatting issue. But it’s still nice to know it’s around.
Recommended Anatomy Flashcard Resource
If you’d prefer to keep your flashcards analog and aren’t a fan of digital, then I’ve got you covered.
Netters’ Anatomy Flashcards are the best set for your needs. The illustrations are top notch, the facts are on point and you don’t need any electronic hardware or software to make them work for you.
Recommended Anatomy Textbook Resource
To supplement your flashcard-based learning it pays to have a good anatomy textbook on hand to better contextualize your learning.
My favorite resource (that I used to score high in anatomy) was Gray’s Anatomy for Students.
I read over the electronic version of this along with doing flashcards and really expanded my knowledge.
Related Anki Flashcard Questions
If you’re not familiar with Anki, I recommend checking out The Anking YouTube channel.
This offers many useful tutorials and tips for Anki users. It’s primarily designed for med students but the content is just as good for students in other fields.
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Here’s a good primer (as well as a good intro on what they offer) below…
Top Tips For Using Anki Anatomy Flashcard Decks
- Do your reviews everyday (leaving plenty of time before final exams are mid-terms)
- Supplement your knowledge with plenty of test questions (9 Anatomy Study Games For College Students (Free, Quick & Fun))
- Have a reliable and recommended anatomy atlas and textbook on hand to help fill any knowledge gaps
Why Use An Anki Anatomy Deck?
- They’re free
- Helps you save time putting together flashcards of your own
- You can rely on the hard work of dedicated med students who’ve gone before you
- Saves stress from having to work out what’s high yield enough to memorize
Where to Find More Anki Anatomy Decks
The best place to find more excellent user generated anatomy decks is the r/medicalschoolanki community. If something gets moved up to the sidebar then you know it’s been vetted and is of good quality.
Related Anki Questions
How Do I Add Plugins To Anki?
You can plugins, such as the hierarchical tags and image occlusion ones mentioned in some of the decks above, by going to tools > add-ons > get add-ons…
Alternatively press ctrl + shift + A on your keyboard.
From there, go to “browse add-ons” and copy the code of the plugin you want into the field here.
The code for image occlusion is 1374772155. For hierarchical tags it’s 594329229.
It’s that easy.
Why Do I Have To Go To Reddit To Download?
Reddit is where these decks are uploaded and shared. The original users deserve accreditation and the opportunity to be thanked for their hard work.
The files for these decks are hosted in these threads created by the deck’s creator.
Final Thoughts: Best Anki Decks For Anatomy
Anatomy is heavy and there’s an awful lot of it!
Learning from flashcards though is always my first recommendation to any students about to dip into it.
Flashcards help with active recall and making sure you memorize the subject effectively.
If you enjoyed this post, you might find the following articles useful:
- How To Memorize Anatomy Quickly (Ultimate 4 Step Strategy)
- 3 Best Histology Anki Decks: Learn Histology Fast
- 6 Best YouTube Channels For Anatomy Beginners
- 22 Amazing Anki Memes (Flashcards Can Be Fun)
Born and raised in the UK, Will went into medicine late (31) after a career in journalism. He’s into football (soccer), learned Spanish after 5 years in Spain, and has had his work published all over the web. Read more.