Medical student evaluation using virtual pathology echocardiography (VPE) for augmented standardized patients

With the increasing role played by ultrasound in clinical diagnostics, ultrasound training in medical education is becoming more important. We have developed a real-time ultrasound simulator to augment standardized patients (SPs) with a simulated echocardiogram. It enables changes in the standard of ultrasound training where the clinical routine is practiced on real patients, which limits monitored and guided examinations for medical students due to time constraints and availability of patients. This paper describes our preliminary system of a tracker-based echocardiogram simulator, the latest evaluation results, and future work.