MRI Cross-Sections

This minigame was conceived by the client, but not implemented in any form.

The user is presented with a cross-section of a heart, chosen at random from a bank of 200 cross-sections (provided by the client). This will be displayed in a panel on the right of the screen. The user must correctly identify where in the heart the cross section is taken from. They will do so by dragging a plane up and down the surface of the heart until they have placed it where they believe to be correct, then click a confirm button. If it is within a certain tolerance of the correct area (+/- 10 slices) then the player will receive an affirming message, otherwise they will be told their answer was wrong and have to start again with a new slice.

Vertebrae Levels
Correctly identifying an MRI cross section is extremely difficult, even for an experienced clinician. During the research trip to Aberdeen, Dr Simon Parson explained that even experts in the field struggle to identify the exact placement of an MRI cross section, and that they are usually content to place it within the correct vertebrae level. The heart is a reasonably large organ, and extends from the T2 level down to the T6 level. Using this as a guide, the tolerance for this minigame should be about 25%.

Arguably, this is too high a tolerance, and for the purposes of the game it should be scaled down to nearer 10% (+/- 20 slices) to create challenge. This may need to be adjusted during testing, if it really does prove too strict. Alternatively, this game mode should give the player a higher number of attempts

Alternative Scoring System #1
Instead of a binary right/wrong system for being within the tolerance level, this game might be more fun if it displayed and recorded how close the user came to getting the right answer. The user would be encouraged to try multiple times to get as close as possible. Absolute success is no longer a requirement, but would be a target to be achieved. This would probably be more entertaining for the user, albeit less like the actual education procedure for identifying MRI cross section locations.

Alternative Scoring System #2
The game could work off a hotter/colder system where after each attempt, the user is shown a coloured indicator as to how close their most recent guess was (a gradiented scale from solid blue -100 or more slices away- to solid red - within 5 slices of the acceptable tolerance level).



Assets

 * Optimised photogrammetric heart
 * Confirm button
 * Slider to move plane
 * Glowing/highly visible plane
 * Common UI elements
 * Display window for MRI scan
 * Display window for remaining attempts