Towards Anatomy Education with Generative AI-based Virtual Assistants in Immersive Virtual Reality Environments

Anatomy education is essential to support medical students in understanding the morphology, location, and spatial relationships of anatomical structures. Virtual reality (VR) and interactive 3D visualization systems have been proposed to provide an engaging learning experience and environment. However, VR-based systems integrated with a generative artificial intelligence (AI) assistant for anatomy education are still underrepresented. This work presents a VR environment with a generative AI virtual assistant to support human anatomy education, allowing the user to communicate verbally with the virtual assistant. We aim to provide a more interactive, adaptive, and informative learning experience. The proposed environment was assessed in a pilot user study (n = 16) with a comparison of two configurations: avatar and screen-based virtual assistant. We observed no significant difference between the configurations and difficulty level in the task completion time and the number of interactions with the virtual assistant. However, there was a significant difference in the score between the difficulty level in the avatar configuration. The results also provide insights into the usability, task load, and sense of presence in the virtual environment. Our proposed environment offers potential benefits and research directions for medical education, using generative AI to assist and enhance the learning experience.