Image Occlusion

Some knowledge is spatial. Where the aorta is, which country borders which, what each part of an interface does. Text flashcards flatten that structure; image occlusion keeps it.

What it is

An image occlusion is an image with regions masked out. During review, Interact shows you the image with a region hidden and asks what's underneath. You recall it, reveal, and grade yourself, just like flipping a flashcard.

One image with five masked labels gives you five review moments, each anchored to the same visual.

Creating one

1. Open the Create page and choose image occlusion
2. Upload your image: a diagram, a map, a chart, a screenshot
3. Draw boxes over the parts you want to memorize, or tap Find labels to have the regions and answers filled in for you
4. Type or check the answer for each region
5. Save it to a subject

The same five steps work on the web and in the iPhone and iPad apps, where you draw the boxes with your finger or an Apple Pencil. On iPhone and iPad you can also pick the image straight from your camera.

Find labels reads the text on the image, draws a region over each label, writes the answer choices, and splits a big diagram into sets of about five. You review and edit before anything is saved. It counts as one AI generation; drawing by hand is always free. On iPhone and iPad the reading happens on your device.

If you draw two or more regions, their answers become each other's wrong answers, so a map of five boroughs needs nothing typed but the five names. Want different choices? Add your own, or have AI write them.

The best source images already have labels, since drawing a box over each label creates an instant "name this part" exercise.

Where it shines

• Anatomy and biology diagrams. The classic use, for good reason.
• Maps. Countries, capitals, rivers, historical borders.
• Interfaces and toolbars. Learning software? Mask the buttons in a screenshot.
• Charts and cycles. Krebs cycle, supply and demand curves, network diagrams.
• Sheet music, circuit boards, star charts. If it's a picture with named parts, it works.

Tips

• Mask one label per region. Big masks covering multiple facts are hard to grade honestly.
• Use a clean, high-resolution image. You'll be looking at it for months.
• A handful of well-chosen regions beats masking everything. Mask what you'd actually want to be quizzed on.
• Keep sets small. A review is graded all-or-nothing, so thirty regions on one image is a card nobody passes. Past about five regions the form offers to save the image as several smaller sets.

Image occlusions are made on the web, iPhone, and iPad, they play on all of those plus Apple TV, and they ride the same spaced repetition schedule as everything else in your collection. \n\n## Related

• Image occlusion feature page
• How to study anatomy