Abstract
TUES Type 2 Project: Development and Application of MITS/DATS Courseware Advancement, Success, Concern, and Weakness After more than ten years of development and application of a web-based, interactive,dynamic track-able Medical Imaging courseware, we have gained extensive experience andknowledge about how students learn and how instructors deliver information in this specificSTEM education field. Medical imaging education is interdisciplinary training included by manyengineering programs, most typically Biomedical Engineering. Medical imaging techniquesinvolve physics principles, mathematical derivations, and engineering implementations for imagegeneration, reconstruction, instrumentation, and clinical application. Obstacles to medicalimaging education include 1) limited class hours to deliver interdisciplinary materials, 2)sophisticated and different math/physics/engineering principle and implementation for eachimaging system, 3) inaccessibility or local unavailability of the imaging devices. Finding anefficient way for instructors to deliver medical imaging knowledge and establishing an effectivelearning environment for students, especially at institutions without associated medical schoolsor hospitals, have long been goals for medical imaging educators. We were motivated by the pedagogical theory, “What you hear, you forget; what you see,you remember; what you do, you understand.” We proposed to develop an Internet accessible,interactive medical imaging teaching system serving the courseware for medical imaging courses.We wish to advance teaching efficiency and learning effectiveness through interaction withmedical imaging animations and simulations. Supported by a series of NSF CCLI/TUES grantsthrough stages of proof-of-concept, creation of prototype, and expansion of application, we havesuccessfully developed the courseware entitled “Medical Imaging Teaching Software (MITS)and Dynamic Assessment Tracking System (DATS)”. The MITS/DATS system providesbackground review, text description, figure illustration, interactive animation, dynamicsimulation, and application demonstration for teaching five commonly used medical imagingmodalities (X-ray, CT, MRI, PET, and Ultrasound). More than twenty institutions in the United States and in other countries have subscribedthe MITS/DATS system. Evaluations from our co-developers and participating colleges arepromising. The medical imaging animations or simulations are interfaced with user-adjustableparameters or settings so that the math/physics/engineering principles can be dynamicallydemonstrated. A “live” medical imaging device or component can be presented withoutaccessing the real equipment. We have created more than thirty animations/simulations coveringfive commonly used medical imaging modalities. The MITS/DATS system is integrated by theopen source MySQL database software that manages updating teaching materials and also tracksstudent’s learning gain through different assessments. Instructors receive instant feedback on thetopics delivered through their lectures when students work on the system. We are concerned withthe number of student participants in different institutions during this developing-testing phasedue to IRB regulations. A sustainable developing/adaptation plan need to be implemented. Abroader application of the MITS/DATS courseware will be the primary task in the next cycle ofthe project.