CHS: Small: Collaborative Research: 3D Audio Augmentation for Limited Field of View Augmented Reality Systems for Medical Training

医疗任务模拟器可以提供安全、负担得起且可重复的环境，从业人员可以在不影响患者安全的情况下排练程序。因此，增强现实（AR）是该领域理想的显示技术，允许用户在自然环境中直接交互和练习技能。但目前的AR显示器通常有一个狭窄的视野（FOV），这使得用户很难立即注意到周围的物体。这项研究将使用3D音频来克服这一挑战。作为对其他AR和医学研究人员的好处，系统本身和为当前工作创建的其他材料（设计，实现和教程）将在项目网站上公开，供所有人使用，修改和贡献，并且将创建一个开源社区来连接与当前工作有相似兴趣的用户和研究人员。本科生，女性和少数族裔学生将通过美国国家科学基金会资助的iAAMCS（非裔美国人计算机科学指导研究所）的本科生分布式研究经验（DREU）计划以及PI的3D声音设计课程参与所有项目活动。结果也将在有关的会议场所散发。目前的工作将推进与在窄视场环境中使用3D音频提示相关的研究，从而改善大型AR环境中的交互，并将创建可推广的最佳实践，从而在使用AR设备时获得成功的体验。, # 8232;这项研究将开发工具、方法和基础设施，以评估如何使用3D声音来增强AR。这一研究领域越来越重要，因为随着虚拟现实（VR）和AR系统变得越来越普遍，设计工具来克服设备限制势在必行。所提出的工作的实际应用将通过评估基于ar的前列腺活检训练程序来实现，该程序将捕获和重建完整的外科手术过程，至少有3个动态参与者非常接近。该项目将追求三个主要主题：(1)基础设施开发- pi和团队将开发一个可扩展的开源软件系统，允许用户测试他们想要的声音映射；(2)声音映射量化——尽管声音已被用于在许多情况下传达空间信息，但将周边信息映射到空间声音属性的适当策略尚未确定，因此pi提出了一系列用户研究，以确定最成功地帮助用户关注其视场外目标的映射；(3)实际应用-为了评估所提出的解决方案如何减轻窄视场的挑战，将进行用户研究，以确定3D音频的添加如何影响参与者学习执行前列腺活检程序的步骤。

Medical task simulators can provide a safe, affordable, and repeatable environment in which practitioners can rehearse procedures without impacting patient safety. Augmented reality (AR) is therefore the ideal display technology in this field, allowing the user to directly interact and practice skills within a natural environment. But current AR displays typically have a narrow field of view (FOV), which makes it difficult for users to immediately attend to an object outside of their periphery. This research will employ 3D audio to overcome that challenge. As a benefit to other AR and medical researchers, the system itself and other materials created for the present work (design, implementation, and tutorials) will be openly available on the project's website for all to use, modify, and contribute, and an open-source community will be created to link users and researchers who have similar interests as the present work. Undergraduate, women, and minority students will be engaged in all project activities through the Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) program of the NSF-funded iAAMCS (Institute for African-American Mentoring in Computing Sciences), as well as the PI's courses on 3D sound design. Results will also be disseminated at relevant conference venues. The present work will advance research relating to the use of 3D audio for cueing in narrow FOV contexts, thereby improving interaction in large AR environments, and will create generalizable best-practices that lead to successful experiences when using AR devices. 
This research will develop the tools, methods, and infrastructure to evaluate how 3D sound can be used to enhance AR. This area of research is increasingly important, because as virtual reality (VR) and AR systems become more commonplace, it is imperative to design tools to overcome device limitations. The practical application of the proposed work will be realized through the evaluation of an AR-based prostate biopsy training procedure that will capture and reconstruct a full surgical procedure, with at least 3 dynamic participants in very close proximity. The project will pursue three main themes: (1) Infrastructure Development - The PIs and team will develop an extensible open-source software system that allows users to test their desired sound mappings; (2) Sound Mapping Quantification - Although sound has been used to convey spatial information in numerous contexts, the appropriate strategy for mapping periphery information to spatial sound attributes has not yet been determined, so the PIs propose a series of user studies to determine the mappings that most successfully help a user to attend to a target outside of their FOV; (3) Practical Application - To assess how well the proposed solution mitigates the challenge of a narrow FOV, a user study will be conducted to determine how the addition of 3D audio affects participants learning to perform the steps of a prostate biopsy procedure.