The design considerations of a virtual reality application for heart anatomy and pathology education

Abstract

Anatomy and pathology of the human body are complex subjects that cannot be elucidated easily to the medical students through traditional description and illustration methods. The proposed interactive system aims to present clear information on demand. For enhancing further the three-dimensional understanding of the anatomical information, a virtual reality environment was developed in order to accommodate different 3D models of the human body. In this case we opted for the heart model as it presents a unique section of the body that can produce motion and sound. The produced model was further simplified for use by patients who wish to understand better the generic anatomy and typical pathologies of the heart. Additionally the paper presents the data results of the system evaluation performed by ten users. The derived results although promising, highlighted some benefits and drawbacks of the proposed system that we aim, to improve in the near future. Finally the paper concludes with a plan of future work which will entail further interactivity through audio incorporation and gesture recognition. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.