Bangor University’s X-ray students use virtual reality gaming to hone their skills – North Wales Chronicle

REVOLUTIONARY virtual reality (VR) headsets and video gaming graphics are being used by Bangor University to train the next generation of X-ray radiographers in North Wales.

The Universitys Wrexham campus was the first in the UK to order a new computer programme which enables students to use VR to learn how to take X-rays without the risk of exposure to harmful cancer-causing gamma rays.

The 15,000 software system, pioneered in Christchurch in New Zealand, is now up and running at the Universitys School of Medical and Health Sciences in Wrexham.

The next generation of radiographers can now learn more quickly and easily to help reduce a chronic shortage of skilled X-ray operators in the NHS.

It recreates a new X-ray suite virtually and at a considerable saving a new facility would cost a quarter of a million pounds to set up.

Delyth Hughes, Bangor University course lead for diagnostic radiography, said: Like all radiography courses, we are limited by the amount of actual X-rays students can take because of exposure to ionising radiation.

But this new VR system means those limits no longer apply because we arent actually taking an X-ray but we can still see the results.

One of the most important things students have to learn is how to position so that the X-ray will be taken at the right angle to show any possible issues with the patient.

Using VR, the student can position a virtual patient and then see if theyve got it right without any of those issues of expense and exposure.

While Bangor University is among the first in the UK to use the system to train radiographers, they are in good company alongside the likes of Ivy League Harvard University in the USA.

James Hayes, a lecturer in medical imaging at the Ara Institute of Canterbury, is the person behind the idea after asking the institutes programming experts to develop the software.

He oversaw their work and said: "I asked them to make it so that it looked like a VR X-ray room rather than a VR game. And they said: Within reason, and I said: Well. let's not say within reason, let's say we want to make it identical.

It will mean students will have far more clinical experience when they get to the hospitals than they or anyone else in the world has had before.

Meanwhile, Bangor University have increased the size of their first year intake of student radiographers by 25 per cent to 35 to help meet a shortage in the NHS.

Delyth Hughes added: Usually, it'd be too dangerous to X-ray unnecessarily, so the system uses a virtual patient.

VR offers our students an engaging and safe way to learn and practise, because everything is identical to the real world in terms of size, distance, and procedures.

If the radiography tube needs to be adjusted, the students can walk up to it, hold it, press the appropriate buttons, and move it.

VR offers audio, visual, and sensory feedback so the students will be able to see and feel, just as if they were working with a real patient.

It will mean that our students will have had far more experience of carrying out these procedures and with only 23 UK universities providing radiography courses, Bangor is leading the way.

Bangor Universitys School of Medical and Health Sciences provides a range of health and care courses and qualifications from its campuses at Bangor and Wrexham, and works closely with the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board across North Wales.

The university offers programmes for health professionals across a range of skills and services for the NHS and for private care services.

For more on studying health sciences at Bangor University, go to: http://www.bangor.ac.uk/health-sciences.

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Bangor University's X-ray students use virtual reality gaming to hone their skills - North Wales Chronicle