Performance of Remote Anatomy and Surgical Training Applications Under Varied Network Conditions

SUMMIT (Stanford University Medical Multimedia and Information Technologies) is currently developing hypermedia applications for remote anatomy and surgical training. These applications include interactive high-resolution 3-D imaging, 3-D streaming video and haptic (force feedback) tools to be used in both self and collaborative study modes. These applications are network-intensive and the perceived performance quality of each one changes in a different manner to varying network conditions. Part of the research conducted at SUMMIT has been focused on determining the network requirements for medical training applications like these. This paper first presents the results of experiments that study the usability of these applications as the network conditions change and then discusses the implications that these results have on the development of similar networked hypermedia educational applications and on the design of networks to be used for them.