Development and evaluation of the effectiveness of educational material for radiological protection that uses augmented reality and virtual reality to visualize the behavior of scattered radiation.

Understanding the behavior of scattered radiation is important for learning appropriate radiation protection methods, but many existing visualization systems for radiation require special devices, making it difficult to use them in education. The purpose of this study was to develop teaching material for radiation protection that can help visualize the scattered radiation with augmented and virtual reality on a web browser, develop a method for using it in education and examine its effectiveness. The distribution of radiation during radiography was calculated using Monte Carlo simulation, and teaching material was created. The material was used in a class for department of radiological technology students and its influence on motivation was evaluated using a questionnaire based on the evaluation model for teaching materials. In addition, text mining was used to evaluate impressions objectively. Educational material was developed that can be used in augmented and virtual reality for studying the behavior of scattered radiation. The results of the questionnaire showed that the average value of each item was more than 4 on a 5-point scale, indicating that the teaching material attracted the interest of users. Through text mining, it could be concluded that there was improved understanding of, and confidence in, radiation protection.