3D virtual reality vs. 2D desktop registration user interface comparison

Abstract

Working with organs and extracted tissue blocks is an essential task in many medical surgery and anatomy environments. In order to prepare specimens from human donors for further analysis, wet-bench workers must properly dissect human tissue and collect metadata for downstream analysis, including information about the spatial origin of tissue. The Registration User Interface (RUI) was developed to allow stakeholders in the Human Biomolecular Atlas Program (HuBMAP) to register tissue blocks—i.e., to record the size, position, and orientation of human tissue data with regard to reference organs. The RUI has been used by tissue mapping centers across the HuBMAP consortium to register a total of 45 kidney, spleen, and colon tissue blocks, with planned support for 17 organs in the near future. In this paper, we compare three setups for registering one 3D tissue block object to another 3D reference organ (target) object. The first setup is a 2D Desktop implementation featuring a traditional screen, mouse, and keyboard interface. The remaining setups are both virtual reality (VR) versions of the RUI: VR Tabletop, where users sit at a physical desk which is replicated in virtual space; VR Standup, where users stand upright while performing their tasks. All three setups were implemented using the Unity game engine. We then ran a user study for these three setups involving 42 human subjects completing 14 increasingly difficult and then 30 identical tasks in sequence and reporting position accuracy, rotation accuracy, completion time, and satisfaction. All study materials were made available in support of future study replication, alongside videos documenting our setups. We found that while VR Tabletop and VR Standup users are about three times as fast and about a third more accurate in terms of rotation than 2D Desktop users (for the sequence of 30 identical tasks), there are no significant differences between the three setups for position accuracy when normalized by the height of the virtual kidney across setups. When extrapolating from the 2D Desktop setup with a 113-mm-tall kidney, the absolute performance values for the 2D Desktop version (22.6 seconds per task, 5.88 degrees rotation, and 1.32 mm position accuracy after 8.3 tasks in the series of 30 identical tasks) confirm that the 2D Desktop interface is well-suited for allowing users in HuBMAP to register tissue blocks at a speed and accuracy that meets the needs of experts performing tissue dissection. In addition, the 2D Desktop setup is cheaper, easier to learn, and more practical for wet-bench environments than the VR setups.

Development of Low-Fidelity Virtual Replicas of Products for Usability Testing

“…Object interactions must align with the usability goals of the product as well. In the human tissue study mentioned above, the researchers found that using a keyboard and mouse allowed for more precise simulation manipulation in comparison to the VR controllers [33]. This was due to subjects using this technology in their daily lives.…”

“…Studies have shown that people are more accustomed to interacting with 2D displays, and they are cheaper to set up. In one study, the subjects' ability to perform a human tissue registration task in VR versus a 2D display was assessed [33]. The goal of the task was to document where specific cells are located within the kidney.…”

“…While this increases the number of functions that can be studied with a physical low-fidelity prototype, game development software enables assessment of visuals and more functionality. Improvements to game development software allows interaction with digital low-fidelity models on a screen [33,34] or combining the ability to interact with a physical prototype while using a screen to visualize the product [32,35]. This is especially useful during the preliminary stages of product development.…”

Specimen, Biological Structure, and Spatial Ontologies in Support of a Human Reference Atlas

“…Spatial accuracy. To understand the limitations of tissue registration using the Registration User Interface (RUI), we performed a user study with 42 subjects 55 . Results show that RUI users can perform tissue block matching tasks at an average of 5.88 degrees rotation accuracy and 1.32 mm position accuracy (at an average of 22.6 seconds per task after 8.3 tasks in a series of 30 identical tasks).…”

Optimizing Performance and Satisfaction in Matching and Movement Tasks in Virtual Reality with Interventions Using the Data Visualization Literacy Framework

“…We designed this experiment as a follow-up study to Bueckle et al (2021a), where 42 subjects across three setups (2D Desktop, VR Tabletop, and VR Standup), performed 14 increasingly difficult and then 30 identical cube-matching tasks either using a VR head-mounted device (HMD) while standing or sitting, or with a traditional 2D screen on a laptop. While the goal of that study was to compare accuracy, completion time, and satisfaction for these implementations, the goal of the study in this paper was to test whether data visualizations can be used to improve time, accuracy, and satisfaction in these VR vs. 2D Desktop implementations of the Registration User Interface (RUI).…”