Affordable Ultrasound Training Simulator

Ultrasound diagnostic skills for medical students and professionals are becoming increasingly important as ultrasound technology has become more portable and effective, but the training to develop these skills is also very expensive due to cost of equipment and the requirement of a human subject. Our goal is to create an inexpensive computer-based augmented reality training simulator to supplement existing hands-on training, in order to allow institutions to more efficiently utilize fewer ultrasound machines for training purposes. Several ultrasound training simulators already exist, but they often require very expensive equipment. To make our training system more accessible and affordable, it is designed to require only a PC with modest video hardware and a motion game controller. Using the Unity3D game engine, we have developed a volumetric raycasting method to render 2D ultrasound images in real-time from 3D mesh models of organ systems. We also investigated various motion game controllers currently available on the market and evaluated pros and cons of each, and found that the PlayStation Move is the most suitable of the controllers we tested.