Augmented Reality for Tactical Combat Casualty Care Training.

Combat Life Savers, Combat Medics, Flight Medics, and Medical Corpsman are the first responders of the battlefield, and their training and skill maintenance is of preeminent importance to the military. While the instructors that train these groups are exceptional, the simulations of battlefield wounds are extremely simple and static, typically consisting of limited moulage with sprayed-on fake blood. These simple presentations often require the imagination of the trainee and the hard work of the instructor to convey a compelling scenario to the trainee. Augmented Reality (AR) tools offer a new and potentially valuable tool for portraying dynamic, high-fidelity visual representation of wounds to a trainee who is still able to see and operate in their real environment. To enhance medical training with more realistic hands-on experiences, we are working to develop the Combat Casualty Care Augmented Reality Intelligent Training System (C3ARESYS). C3ARESYS is our concept for an AR-based training system that aims to provide more realistic multi-sensory depictions of wounds that evolve over time and adapt to the trainee interventions. This paper describes our work to date in identifying requirements for such a training system, current state of the art and limitations in commercial augmented reality tools, and our technical approach in developing a portable training system for medical trainees.