Pocket Brain, an interactive, web-based ultrasound atlas of normal and abnormal fetal brain development

The teaching of ultrasound involves various modalities, including direct tuition by a teacher, supervised acquisition and application of practical skills, and observation of educational normal and pathological specimens. Some aspects can be achieved by self-study, using multimedia material and ultrasound simulators. Imaging data are well suited to transformation into digital learning objects. Using appropriately converted obstetric and gynecological ultrasound volume data, we have shown previously that such digital objects can be used with regular computer equipment, via a freely available storage and interactive display format, QuickTime Virtual reality. Mobile devices, including smartphones, are ubiquitous in medicine, but a recent literature review found only a limited number of publications regarding the use of reference applications by physicians or medical students6. Until recently, due to the lack of a universal standard, interactive imaging content was not available for widespread use on stationary and mobile devices. Here, we extend the existing uses of virtual reality imaging for ultrasound to a web-based, cross-platform reference application, using a new standard format (hypertext markup language level, revision 5 (HTML5)), compatible with current mobile devices, to display interactive volume imaging data. Using ultrasound volume datasets from clinical cases with known outcomes, acquired from normal and abnormal mid-trimester fetal brains, as described previously4, we created ‘Pocket Brain’, an interactive onlinemultimedia atlas of fetal brain anatomy and pathology for stationary andmobile devices