Serious Game for Medical Imaging in Fully Immersive Virtual Reality

Fully immersive virtual reality systems allow the implementation of new immersive user interfaces and data visualization applications that offer effective ways to interact with multidimensional neuroimaging data. Learning to interpret 3D medical imaging scans can be an intimidating experience for students given the large range of pathologies to visualize and the relative placement(s) and location(s) of areas of interest, a process which is further complicated by interacting with, manipulating, and navigating through images across several possible views. Gamification and Serious Games (SG) have proved to have instructional benefits for teaching and learning. The adoption and use of virtual reality in education is growing, driven by the availability of more powerful and affordable virtual reality (VR) headsets, allowing novel ways to interact with and explore teaching material. This paper explores the use of VR to teach the fundamentals of medical imaging interpretation and the opportunities available in using immersive 3D visualizations to understand the spatial relationships between parts of the body, key organs, and their constituent parts. An integrated immersive learning environment is presented which orientates and guides the student through this process and assesses their subsequent level of understanding. The use of gamification in this context to increase student engagement and retention is discussed.