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BACKGROUND: The use of head mounted display (HMD)-based immersive virtual reality (VR) coaching systems (HMD-VRC) is expected to be effective for skill acquisition in radiography. The usefulness of HMD-VRC has been reported in many previous studies. However, previous studies have evaluated the effectiveness of HMD-VRC only through questionnaires. HMD-VRC has difficulties in palpation and patient interaction compared to real-world training. It is expected that these issues will have an impact on proficiency. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of VR constraints in HMD-VRC, especially palpation and patient interaction, on radiographic skills proficiency in a real-world setting. METHODS: First-year students (n = 30) at a training school for radiology technologists in Japan were randomly divided into two groups, one using HMD-VRC (HMD-VRC group) and the other practicing with conventional physical equipment (RP group) and trained for approximately one hour. The teachers then evaluated the students for proficiency using a rubric method. RESULTS: In this study, it was found that some skills in the HMD-VRC group were equivalent to those of the RP group and some were significantly lower than those of the RP group. There was a significant decrease in proficiency in skills related to palpation and patient interaction. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that HMD-VRC can be less effective than real-world training in radiographic techniques, which require palpation and patient interaction. For effective training, it is important to objectively evaluate proficiency in the real world, even for HMD-VRC with new technologies, such as haptic presentation and VR patient interaction. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study was conducted with the approval of the Ethics Committee of International University of Health and Welfare (Approval No.21-Im-035, Registration date: September 28, 2021).
Kato et al. (Thu,) studied this question.