The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine will introduce biomedical tele-immersion into the curriculum of surgical residents beginning in July. The residents will participate in a unique research project to measure whether virtual reality technology, high-performance computing and high-speed networking cam improve medical education. With a new $1.04 million grant from the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine, UIC researchers are developing and refining virtual models of the liver, pelvic floor and temporal bone, and studying the models' impact on medical education and training.

The project is a collaboration among researchers in the Virtual Reality in Medicine Laboratory in UIC's College of Health and Human Development Sciences, the UIC College of Engineering's Electronic Visualization Laboratory, the UIC College of Medicine's departments of surgery, head and neck surgery and medical education, as well as physicians in the colon and rectal surgery department at neighboring Cook County Hospital.