MORPHING AS A MEANS OF GENERATING VARIATION IN VISUAL MEDICAL TEACHING MATERIALS

In computer-based medical education, there is frequently a need to pre sent students with pictorial data representative of the natural variat ion associated with disease presentations as well as the progression o f disease within an individual. Because of the difficulty in acquiring such data, image acquisition is often the most resource-intensive pha se of multimedia courseware development. In light of the resource dema nds associated with image content, many courseware designers do not ma ke opportune use of image data, but rely instead upon text description s to provide variation in content. The resulting lack of adequate pict orial content often lessens the overall impact of the courseware. To o vercome constraints imposed by the difficulty in acquiring pictorial c ontent of sufficient richness, a methodology of generating variation i n visual teaching materials has been developed through the use of morp hing. These techniques have general applicability in creating variatio n in pictorial teaching materials in a variety of image-intensive doma ins.