Virtual Reality is Helping Veterinary Medicine

Sarah Baillie is a professor at the Royal Veterinary College in London. She has come up with a way to help veterinary students located the organs inside animals such as cows and horses without using live subjects. Baillie teamed up with a virtual reality experts from Virtalis to create a simulation of a cow using haptic technology.



It works in a unique way. They attach a robotic arm to the student's middle finger that is placing their hand inside the "animal" (their hand is floating in thin air). Depending on where the student moves their hand, the mechanical arm give a counter acting force that resembles the same force that a certain organ would give depending on the location of the hand (indicating an organ). This simulatin is perfect for students trying to find the uterus of a cow.

The simulation is very versatile. Baillie can create different scenarios for the student to work with. For instance, she can simulate a pregnant cow or even a cow with a cyst. There are many learning possibilities that come along with this new innovative way to teach veterinary students.

To test if the effectiveness of the training, they did a study with both students that were trained with the simulation device and students that were trained the traditional way. The results showed that those who were trained with the simulation did significantly better on locating the uterus of a cow.

The virtual reality concept is a brilliant idea. I believe that there is so much more that biomedical engineers can do with this new technology. Hopefully in a few years we can relate this to help train surgeons, dentist, and any medical profession that is hands on.

Web Site Link:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/08/09/fs.haptic.cow/index.html