A hybrid virtual environment for training of radiotherapy treatment of cancer
Roger Phillips, James W. Ward, Pete Bridge, Robert Appleyard, Andrew W. Beavis · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2006
There is often insufficient access to patients and linear accelerator treatment rooms to train radiotherapy students. An alternative approach is for some training to use a hybrid virtual environment (HVE) that simulates an actual radiotherapy treatment machine controlled with the actual machine's handheld control pendant. A study of training using such a HVE is presented for "skin apposition" treatment, where the patient couch and radiotherapy equipment are positioned so that the radiation beam strikes the skin perpendicularly. The HVE developed comprises a virtual treatment room with a linear accelerator, modelled from laser scan data and a virtual patient. A genuine linear accelerator control handheld "pendant" provided the user interface to the virtual linear accelerator. A virtual patient, based on the visible human female dataset, complete with rectangular markings for a range of different treatment sites, provided a range of treatment scenarios. Students were trained in groups with the virtual world being displayed stereoscopically on a large work-wall. A study of 42 students was conducted to evaluate learning. 93% of students perceived an improvement in their understanding of this treatment using the HVE and 69% found the control system to be easy to master.