Developing a medical training game for visual assessment of head deformities in infants

Abstract

Anatomical evaluation of an infant's head shape is an important task in clinical practice to diagnose cranial deformities. In the first stage of diagnosis, the current practice mainly relies on visual head inspection. However, this is a difficult task and subjective between physicians. Thus, medical training is paramount to correctly perform the visual head shape assessment to guarantee a safe diagnosis. The main goal of this work is the development of a prototype of a medical game called Head Shape Inspector to train individuals to perform head shape analysis. During the game, the player categorizes 3D surfaces of infants' heads according to their cranial deformity. Moreover, the game also allows the user to visualize anthropometric measurements of the head, required in clinical practice to quantify the deformities, to aid the categorization process. Preliminary experiments showed that playing the game can improve the visual inspection skills, suggesting the potential of the game to be used for medical training.