Multimedia and Its Uses in Ultrasound

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Terry DuBose, M.S.: "We’re here in San Francisco at the 44^th Annual Conference, and we have Dr. Greggory DeVore who is from the Fetal Diagnostic Center of Pasadena and also, I understand, has an appointment at NIH and does some work there."

Dr. Greggory DeVore: "That’s correct."

Terry DuBose, M.S.: "He has done considerable work in fetal hearts which most people probably know about and has a CD-ROM out, he’s quite knowledgeable on multimedia and that sort of thing and apparently has had a very successful meeting here. Would you like to tell us about that?"

Dr. Greggory DeVore: "Yes, the course was planned for this year in San Francisco, we were contacted by the program directors to put on a two-hour categorical course on new multimedia. The concept was that we would attempt to try and explain or teach the physicians and the sonographers how to use multimedia in their presentations, in teaching, or educational. I invited Dr. Philippe Jeanty to participate in the under program and to our surprise we actually thought we’d have Dr. Jeanty and myself and maybe ten nerds in the audience and that would be it. The hall was packed; we had people in every chair and standing along the walls. What we did was a little bit unique, we not only simply talked about the subject but we showed them how to make video clips, how to change audio into MPEG-3, and we gave demonstrations. It was very hands on, in a sense practical approach and also showed them newer concepts of TD creation."

Terry DuBose, M.S.: "Do you think most of these were educators?"

Dr. Greggory DeVore: "I asked what they were doing, most of them were educators and also for their own talks because if you look at the presentations, we had few unsure doctors who were using slides, using Power Point with video clips, or Power Point with still images. And we had a number that had questions about the Internet for their own Internet pages. We also had some questions about CD-ROM creation because I think in the future the education and how we learn will go to, of course, the Internet but also CD-ROM format allows you to have much richer material especially visual material to stay on the computer. So I got a sense that it was for personal and for perhaps other reasons."

Terry DuBose, M.S.: "Yes, professional education."

Dr. Greggory DeVore: "That’s good."

Terry DuBose, M.S.: "It’s a logical direction to go."

Dr. Greggory DeVore: "I think the benefit of it is that, for example, we saw at the meeting this week, ultrasound machines that consist of a probe and a box that was hooked into a laptop computer, and it ran off into the Fire Wire of the laptop. But with the miniaturization of ultrasound and the images coming into the computers, it will be very important for people to know how to take the image off the computer, or off that same machine and transfer the image from the machine to the laptop or the desktop. So there’s a tremendous amount of interest."

Terry DuBose, M.S.: "Yes, that brings up for me as an educator the weak link of this is still going to be the operator and how we’re going to deal with the education of people because apparently this stuff is going to proliferate and get smaller. People will drive around with them in their glove compartments apparently, and it’s a total market for education."

Dr. Greggory DeVore: "Ten or fifteen years ago when ultrasound was introduced into the obstetrical market when ultrasound was portable, was real-time, proliferation of equipment not a proliferation necessary of education, it was abused and misused. Now with the smaller systems we’re going to recreate the wheel but, hopefully, those of us who were around at that time will be smart enough to know if it’s going to happen and how to change it so that the physicians learn how to do it. The best way if they’re going to use these smaller systems is to recognize the problem that’s in it for help. And a very powerful way to teach them is with multimedia because the picture on the page doesn’t cover it anymore. You can give them a real-time clip and show them what it looks like in real-time and point out the findings then your learning curve is shortened."

Terry DuBose, M.S.: "I appreciate it, Dr. DeVore."

Dr. Greggory DeVore: "Thank you."