Above from left: Dr.
Andras Vedres, IFIA president and
Dr. Siriwan Suebnukarn
An AIT and Thammasat University collaboration on the
intelligent clinical training system named COMET, recently bagged the
gold medal during the world competition of Computer Implemented
Invention (CII). The competition was organized by the
International Federation of Inventors' Association
(IFIA) and took place at the International Invention
Exhibition, Su Zhou, China on 16-19 October
2008.
This project was jointly developed by an AIT
alumnus Dr. Siriwan Suebnukarn who is now an
Assistant Professor at Thammasat University’s Dental School and
an AIT adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of
Engineering and Technology, together with Prof. Peter
Haddawy, AIT Vice President for Academic Affairs, and
Mr. Phattanapon Rhienmora, an AIT Ph.D student in
Computer Science, SET.
According to Dr. Siriwan, one of the inventors of the system,
the training towards clinical competence follows close expert
supervision while interacting with patients. This method of training
subjects patients to discomfort, risk of complications, prolonged
procedure times and limited access to complex scenarios.
She said COMET is an intelligent tutoring system for clinical
problem solving skill training. It utilizes probabilistic modeling of
students and groups combined with pedagogic strategies to offer
feedback to students. The inventors combine COMET with a virtual
reality haptic device for manual clinical skill training. Collision
detection between virtual patient model and an instrument is simulated.
Force and position of an instrument are captured and used for clinical
skill training.
COMET is the first general domain-independent framework that
combines aspects of Intelligent Tutoring System and Computer Supported
Collaborative Learning that facilitates clinical problem solving skill
acquisition. For manual clinical skill training simulation, the haptic
and graphics calculations of virtual patient and instrument are done in
a computationally inexpensive way to maintain the system
stability and still preserving the realism of the simulator.