A High-Resolution Virtual Reality-Based Simulator to Enhance Perioperative Echocardiography Training

Perioperative echocardiography requires an advanced understanding of the complex human cardiac anatomy. Cur-rently, conventional training simulators rely on handcrafted heart models that lack accuracy and details and undermine the complexities of the cardiac anatomy, both actual and relative. These simulators are expensive and difficult to transport, creat-ing barriers to widespread implementation. In this report, the authors describe a realistic, virtual reality simulator using high-resolution human heart scans that accurately represent the healthy and pathologic cardiac anatomies in ways that can be standardized and made accessible to a wide range of learn-ers at the cost of a virtual reality headset. Herein, the authors present a description, including the design of the transesopha-geal echocardiography and transthoracic echocardiography simulator, and their initial experiences during cardiac fellow-ship training.