Abstract

Atenga D. Victor and John V. H

Students in developing countries like Ghana do not have easy access to sophisticated medical equipment like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computer Tomography (CT) and Ultra sound Scanners. This is due to the fact that these imaging equipment are highly expensive. As a result of this, the students lacked the requisite practical experiences in these equipments during their training. In addition, the understanding of the basic concepts behind the operation of these equipments becomes difficult as they only have to imagine what is written in the books. To address this problem, a virtual laboratory has been designed as a teaching aid to resolve the problem. In this work, the MRI machine was used as a case study where the student logs in into the virtual MRI laboratory and will undergo the necessary tutorials on the mode of operation and design features of the MRI machine. The virtual laboratory, as teaching aid, saves time and would help the students in learning basic and advanced concepts through remote experimentation (Chu, 1999). Other medical imaging equipment can also be incorporated into this design.