Immersive Educational Simulation of Medical Ultrasound Examination

In the Poznan University of Technology Chair of Production Engineering and Management, a Virtual Reality - Rapid Prototyping team has been active for many years and one of the studied activities is possibility of VR use in classes for higher education. As a result of cooperation with one of the medical universities in the region, an educational application has been developed, as a didactic aid during anatomy, physiology and pathology courses. During the test use, the application has been found quite interesting for both the lecturers and the students. It allowed, among other things, to freely slice the virtual human body and showing and hiding selected groups of organs, in order to allow detailed inspection of human anatomy by the user. This work continues in the study presented in this paper - they are aimed at expanding the simulation functionalities and allowing to conduct a training for the ultrasound examination. In many previous studies, it was proven that possibility of tracking the user's movements allows the simulation realism to be improved. It is a result of the phenomenon of immersion of the user in the virtual world. The immersion improves quality of the conducted virtual training and allows to better use the abilities learned during the course. In case of the ultrasound scanner, it is necessary to track both the position and the orientation of the device head, for proper generation of the virtual image of the insides of the human body. The paper discusses a process of adaptation of a head used in the ultrasound scan to application in the training simulation. Process of preparation and adaptation of the head geometry was described, along with a process of preparation of virtual and then physical prototypes using the 3D Printing technology. The prepared prototypes were covered with markers of the optical tracking system. Proper arrangement of the markers was implemented in the database and scenarios of work were prepared, to check correctness of gathering information about the ultrasound scanner head orientation and position in the three-dimensional space. Developed solutions were verified on a test group of users. Obtained results were presented in a form allowing their easy interpretation. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.