An Innovative Method for Incorporating Radiology Images into the Medical School Curriculum Neil Kalra, David Pinelle, Brent Burbridge, Greg Malin College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan

The Challenge

The Challenge Undergraduate medical students at the University of Saskatchewan have limited experience viewing and learning to interpret radiology images Limited classroom exposure. 5-6 radiology lectures in MED I/MED II No access to interactive and self-directed learning resources

The Challenge Medical Imaging recently deployed a digital teaching file server that runs MIRC software One possible solution Use MIRC as an image source for pre-clinical training Incorporate images into the campus-wide BlackBoard learning management system Unfortunately, it was unclear how to: Link two servers, scale images, present images to students, allow students to interact with images, structure content to support classroom objectives

Solution

Solution University of Saskatchewan Radiology Courseware (USRC) Reformats content stored in Medical Imaging Resource Center (MIRC) teaching cases for BlackBoard Learn Allows imported MIRC content to be organized to support the teaching objectives of the course Inserts an image viewer plug-in that allows users to interact with the images, annotations, and captions in the case Can be used to reformat MIRC cases for presentation in any learning management system or website

Solution Student’s computer Radiology server BlackBoard Learn server University of Saskatchewan Radiology Courseware. The web application supports communication between the MIRC teaching file server and BlackBoard Learn. Radiology cases are reformatted for display in web browsers running on students’ computers. Radiology server running MIRC Student’s computer BlackBoard Learn server

Solution Case in MIRC and BlackBoard Learn. Left: MIRC case covering normal anatomy of the abdomen and containing explanatory text and an annotated CT series. Right. The same case displayed in BlackBoard Learn using USRC technology. The CT series is shown using the image viewer and the text is reformatted and displayed at the bottom of the screen.

Content

Content USRC is being used in Form and Function, a first-year medical school course, at the University of Saskatchewan Custom content was developed to support the gross anatomy component of the course 5 modules covering 5 anatomical regions Normal anatomy Common pathologies Interactive content Evaluation tools were developed

Preliminary Results

Preliminary Results Online survey of Form and Function students who have used University of Saskatchewan Radiology Courseware N = 49

Preliminary Results Online survey of Form and Function students who have used University of Saskatchewan Radiology Courseware N = 49

Acknowledgements SaskTel and the RUH Foundation for providing funding for this project. Dr. David Pinelle, Dr. Brent Burbridge, Dr. Greg Malin, Dr. Paul Babyn