Interactive mixed reality for muscle structure and function learning

Abstract

Understanding the structure and function of the muscular system is important in many different medical scenarios, such as student and patient education, muscle training, and rehabilitation of patients with kinetic problems. The structure and function of muscles are difficult to learn as muscle movement is imperceptible using the traditional methods. In this paper, an interactive mixed reality system is proposed for facilitating the learning of the muscles of the upper extremities. The proposed system consists of two main components: an AR view, overlaying the virtual model of the arm on top of the video stream, and a VR view, providing a more detailed understanding of the muscles. The mixed reality view helps the user to mentally map the behaviour of muscles to his/her own body during different movements. A user study including twenty students was performed by a questionnaire framework. The results indicate that our system is useful for learning the structure and function of the muscle and can be a valuable supplement to established muscle learning paradigms.