The Virtual Haptic Back: a teaching aid for palpatory diagnosis

Abstract

The virtual haptic back (VHB) is a virtual reality simulation of the feel of a real human back, designed as a teaching/learning aid in palpatory diagnosis. The simulation is based on compliance measurements made on living subjects with PHANToM 3.0 haptic interfaces from SensAble Technologies and uses these interfaces in the simulation. First year osteopathic medical students (N=89), required to participate as part of the manipulative medicine course, were tested as to their ability to find sites of abnormal tissue compliance in the VHB before and after six practice sessions. On the pre-test subjects as a group failed to show mastery in detecting compliance differences of 39%; following practice they were able to detect differences as little as 14%. Improvement in performance during the practice sessions were seen with compliance differences as low as 7%. Following the practice sessions students were asked, “Do you think that the practice with the Virtual Haptic Back will be of help to you in the development of your palpatory skills in the manipulative medicine laboratory?” 39% said “yes;” 51% said maybe;” 10% said “no;” The VHB offers an objective measure of palpatory skill and appears to have promise for teaching palpatory diagnosis of the human back. This technology may prove to be useful in developing teaching aids for other palpatory examinations used in making clinical diagnoses. Supported by the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation.