As advanced technology continues to permeate the DoD and healthcare simulation enterprises, Virtual Reality (VR) systems coupling Head Mounted Display (HMD) systems with advanced commercial rendering, have transitioned from entertainment applications to powerful tools for serious applications in modeling, simulation, and training.  Caution is warranted prior to adoption of the technology, as Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and the Human-Machine Interface (HMI) are arguably more critical in the design and development of these systems given the users’ full immersion in these digital environments. Inadequate testing and validation can potentially lead to negative training more readily, and so care must be taken to ensure accurate representation of both the environment and the user interaction with it. The software and hardware systems need to be developed and tested using best practice methods for HMI and HCI.  

The paper will discuss our research and application of HMI/HCI to ensure that VR systems intended to be used as Software as a Medical Device (SAMD) are sufficient for the intended use.  Despite the growing use of 3D displays and visualization, current standards for healthcare displays are based on traditional 2D monitors.  We will discuss our methods of ensuring compliance with the ACR–AAPM–SIIM Technical Standard for Electronic Practice of Medical Imaging (PMC3553359) for a VR system.  The paper will also describe HMD hardware testing to characterize luminance and distortion to ensure that system preserves and presents accurate and clear 3D representations. A survey of technical literature in this area will be presented, while also including how our methodology contributes to advancing the practice.

We conducted clinical validation of our SAMD in a simulated clinical environment and hardware characterization testing to quantify and measure HMD performance.  This integrated set of results was used to ensure that our SAMD system provided a clinically useable system that accurately represents the physical world, in terms of both software and hardware presentation.

Keywords
AUGMENTED AND VIRTUAL REALITY (AR/VR), HEAD-MOUNTED DISPLAYS, HUMAN FACTORS, INTERACTIVE, MEDICAL MODELING AND SIMULATION

Additional Keywords