Role of Virtual Reality (VR) Technology as a Training Tool for the Students in Learning Wrist Anatomy

Background: Conventional anatomy learning among students is recently known to be a difficult, time consuming and expensive source of training when compared to Virtual reality (VR) training. Given that VR training is a widely established effective method of anatomy learning, limited evidence exists on determining the effective method of segmentation that would help in developing a VR game for the method to be an efficacious way of learning among students. Method: Wrist CT scan via DICOM images were imported for segmentation using Seg3D, MATLAB and Brainlab. The Brainlab segmented results were then used to develop a puzzle game to be played with Oculus device. Eleven students were invited to play the three-level game, of which one was for familiarization of the game, second to understand the wrist carpal anatomy and lastly a puzzle where the time taken to assemble the carpal bones and accuracy was measured. Every individual had three trials to play the game to determine the learning effect. Results: Time taken to complete the game from first to second trial (p= 0.002) and first to third trial (p= 0.002) significantly decreased, while accuracy from first to second trial (p= 0.002), second to third trial (p= 0.001) and first to third (p= 0.018) trial significantly increased across all students. Conclusion: Virtual reality anatomy learning is an efficacious method that significantly was observed to be an interactive, user friendly, skillful and time-efficient type of learning. Students in the study reported such type of learning fun with proficient spatial awareness of the bones.