A COLLABORATION between Sarah Baillie, a veterinary surgeon, and Virtalis, Europe’s leading Virtual Reality (VR) and Advanced Visualisation Company, has seen the creation of an innovative Haptic Cow, which allows trainee vets to explore a virtual model instead of a real animal.

Haptic force feedback technology has been used to create a virtual bovine reproductive tract, positioned inside a fibreglass model of the rear half of a cow. At the heart of the trainer is the PHANTOM haptic device from SensAble Technologies. This instrument makes it possible for users to touch and palpate virtual objects. In addition, because the cow’s organs are visible on the computer monitor, the instructor can see exactly what the student is doing and direct the movements - something that is very difficult with a real cow.

We are all familiar with the image of the vet struggling to help cows with tricky deliveries. There are also many other procedures that involve vets putting their hands inside horses and cattle, such as pregnancy diagnosis, fertility examinations and rectal examinations. However, until now, training has essentially relied on vet students learning on the farm with the real cow. There are various drawbacks with this traditional method, the most obvious being that the trainer cannot see what the student is doing and cannot advise on how much pressure to apply. Additionally, there is the consideration of animal welfare during this type of training and the need to help students learn to communicate with farmers.

To summarise the issues:

• difficult to guide students when the instructor can’t see what they are palpating inside the cow/horse.
• students can’t see what the instructor is doing, so can’t copy.
• little quality feedback from "the patient"
• concerns for animal welfare

The answer:

The Haptic Cow simulator has been developed over several years and tests have been carried out to assess the effects of training with the Haptic Cow. An evaluation was conducted with two groups of vet students; one group had their training supplemented with a simulator session and another group received only traditional training. The students were then set the task of locating the uterus when examining cows for the first time and ultrasound was used to verify that the uterus had been identified correctly. The results showed that the performance of the simulator-trained group was significantly better than the traditionally-trained group.

Read papers/abstracts -  Haptic Cow (MMVR 2005) (236.43 KB)  &  Haptic Cow (AMEE Abstract 2004) (12.14 KB)

Ongoing work will include the development of a horse colic simulator, as well as a self-teaching version of the cow that students can use on their own.

Virtalis resells the PHANTOM in the UK and developed its own medical trainer in the late 1990s, to assist surgeons learning and practicing laparoscopic keyhole surgery techniques.

Web Links:

Sarah Baillie's webpage -   http://www.live.ac.uk/html/projects_haptic_01.html