Advantage of three dimensional animated teaching over traditional surgical videos for teaching ophthalmic surgery: a randomised study

Abstract

Background/aim: Owing to the complex topographical aspects of ophthalmic surgery, teaching with conventional surgical videos has led to a poor understanding among medical students. A novel multimedia three dimensional (3D) computer animated program, called "Ophthalmic Operation Vienna" has been developed, where surgical videos are accompanied by 3D animated sequences of all surgical steps for five operations. The aim of the study was to assess the effect of 3D animations on the understanding of cataract and glaucoma surgery among medical students.

Method: Set in the Medical University of Vienna, Department of Ophthalmology, 172 students were randomised into two groups: a 3D group (n=90), that saw the 3D animations and video sequences, and a control group (n=82), that saw only the surgical videos. The narrated text was identical for both groups. After the presentation, students were questioned and tested using multiple choice questions.

Results: Students in the 3D group found the interactive multimedia teaching methods to be a valuable supplement to the conventional surgical videos. The 3D group outperformed the control group not only in topographical understanding by 16% (p<0.0001), but also in theoretical understanding by 7% (p<0.003). Women in the 3D group gained most by 19% over the control group (p<0.0001).

Conclusions: The use of 3D animations lead to a better understanding of difficult surgical topics among medical students, especially for female users. Gender related benefits of using multimedia should be further explored.

Figure 1

Screenshots of multimedia teaching project “Ophthalmic Operation Vienna”: 3D animation of cataract (left, upper) and glaucoma (right, upper) surgery, bystander video view (left, lower) and triple view with all views shown simultaneously (right, lower).

Figure 2

Evaluation of 3D animations by students of the 3D group (n = 90) using a questionnaire, scale from “fully agree” (1) to “disagree” (4). Boxes represent the interquartile range, bold lines the median, whiskers the non-outlier range, and circles the outliers.

Figure 3

(Upper) Percentage of correct answers in the 3D and control groups for topographical (8 MCQ) and theoretical MCQs (11 MCQ). (Lower) Percentage of correct answers for topographical and theoretical MCQs for cataract and glaucoma in the 3D and control groups.