HeartWorks

Echocardiography is taught in two halves that rarely meet. On one side the anatomy of the heart, studied in atlases and specimens. On the other the imaging plane, learned on screen, in black and white, with the patient in front of you. A beginner has to bridge the two in their head, and that is where learning stalls: you cannot tell what you are seeing because you cannot tell where the beam went.

HeartWorks places the two halves side by side. On the left, the three-dimensional heart with 135 intracardiac structures, turning as the probe moves. On the right, the matching echocardiographic image. The imaging plane stops being abstract: it is the slice you watch cutting through the model.

The probes are the ones used in the examination. The transthoracic rests on the manikin's chest, with anatomical landmarks for positioning; the transoesophageal carries the real controls, ante and retroflexion, lateral flexion and omniplane rotation. There are 20 transthoracic and 28 transoesophageal planes, with colour, PW and CW Doppler, and M-Mode.

The library holds 30 patient cases, normal and diseased, including hearts with implanted devices. START 2.0 closes the loop on the teaching side: it presents the task, takes the measurement the trainee made and keeps the result for review.