Stanford doctors use VR to help families understand their child’s heart conditions
Pediatric cardiologists at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford are using immersive virtual reality (VR) technology to explain complex congenital heart defects, which are some of the most difficult medical conditions to teach and understand.
The Stanford Virtual Heart experience helps families understand their child’s heart conditions by employing a new kind of interactive visualization that goes far beyond diagrams, plastic models and hand-drawn sketches.
For medical trainees, it provides an immersive and engaging new way to learn about the two dozen most common and complex congenital heart anomalies by allowing them to inspect and manipulate the affected heart, walk around inside it to see how the blood is flowing, and watch how a particular defect interferes with the heart’s normal function.
“The heart is a complicated three-dimensional organ, and it’s really hard to describe what’s going on inside of it — especially when something is going wrong,” said David M. Axelrod, MD, clinical assistant professor of pediatric cardiology at Stanford University School of Medicine.
“Virtual reality eliminates a lot of that complexity by letting people go inside the heart and see what’s happening themselves — it’s worth way more than a thousand words.”
Students at Stanford University School of Medicine are already using ‘The Stanford Virtual Heart’ to learn about congenital heart defects and to help them visualize the procedures our pediatric heart surgeons use to correct these conditions. Students have reported that VR is the most engaging way to learn about anatomy, far surpassing textbooks, models, online videos and cadavers.
Users put on a VR headset and use handheld remote controls to interact with the virtual heart.
They can rotate it, open it and inspect its different pieces, including the various heart defects. They can then “teleport” inside the heart to see the interior of the heart’s chambers and vessels and to watch the circulation of blood throughout the heart.
Once inside, users can see exactly where the defect exists, such as a hole in a septum or an improperly attached valve (both common congenital heart defects). With a doctor close by to explain, the patient can more easily understand how stitches might close up a hole or how a valve would be repaired.
The Stanford Virtual Heart program was designed by Stanford cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgery experts, along with VR education content producers at Lighthaus Inc. The program will be available to children ages 13 and older and their parents and caregivers. Doctors say the new technology makes it much easier for everyone to understand congenital heart problems.
These virtual experiences hold the promise of a new frontier in medical training that will allow learners to absorb anatomical and physiological concepts faster and more effectively.
“The quicker I can get our medical providers to completely understand their patients’ hearts, the better the outcomes for the patient,” said Axelrod.
David Sarno, founder of Lighthaus Inc., said cardiologists from around the world have tried the program have agreed on VR’s potential to reshape medical education, including cardiology. He believes VR technology will be standard in hospitals and medical schools within the next two years.
“Anatomy is a lot easier to perceive and understand when you can see and interact with a living virtual body,” Sarno said. “It brings medical education to life.”
Source: Stanford Children’s Health
