Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Nov 8, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: Nov 9, 2018 - Jan 4, 2019
Date Accepted: Mar 24, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Effect of an Augmented Reality Ultrasound Trainer App on the Motor Skills Needed for a Kidney Ultrasound: Prospective Trial
Background:
Medical education is evolving from "learning by doing" to simulation-based hands-on tutorials.
Objective:
The aim of this prospective 2-armed study was to evaluate a newly developed augmented reality ultrasound app and its effect on educational training and diagnostic accuracy.
Methods:
We recruited 66 medical students and, using imaging and measuring a kidney as quality indicators, tested them on the time they needed for these tasks. Both groups used textbooks as preparation; in addition, the study group had access to a virtual ultrasound simulation app for mobile devices.
Results:
There was no significant difference between the study arms regarding age (P=.97), sex (P=.14), and previous ultrasound experience (P=.66). The time needed to complete the kidney measurements also did not differ significantly (P=.26). However, the results of the longitudinal kidney measurements differed significantly between the study and control groups, with larger, more realistic values in the study group (right kidney: study group median 105.3 mm, range 86.1-127.1 mm, control group median 92 mm, range 50.4-112.2 mm; P<.001; left kidney: study group median 100.3 mm, range 81.7-118.6 mm, control group median 85.3 mm, range 48.3-113.4 mm; P<.001). Furthermore, whereas all students of the study group obtained valid measurements, students of the control group did not obtain valid measurements of 1 or both kidneys in 7 cases.
Conclusions:
The newly developed augmented reality ultrasound simulator mobile app provides a useful add-on for ultrasound education and training. Our results indicate that medical students’ use of the mobile app for training purposes improved the quality of kidney measurements.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.