Abstract
Virtual Reality (VR) based training systems are becoming popular in medicine. Successful asynchronous teaching of psychomotor skills by recording expert's actions and replaying them to novices would boost the speed of training process. These record-and-replay teaching methods have been demonstrated only in less complex domains, typically in handwriting.
This study evaluates a so called record-annotate-replay approach for teaching Digital Rectal Examination (DRE) skill in a simulated Virtual Environment (VE). Experienced urologists' performances were recorded on a physics-based DRE simulator, after which they encapsulated their insight on the skill by making VR annotations to the VE's physical parameters which should be taught. Priority of physical parameters with three-dimensional features and reificative features are pointed out on the recorded performances.
In a training experiment, medical students were able to “read” the VR annotations by proactive mainpulation in the VE, which enhanced learning of the skill in comparison to a control group who trained by following visually replayed urologists' movements.
This study acts as a proof-of-concept of record-annotate-replay approach which has potential to reduce the restrictions of time, space, language and number of people involved when in VR based teaching of psychomotor skills.
