EMERALD and EMIT—worldwide computer aided education and training packages in medical physics

Abstract

This paper describes the development of two web based education and training packages EMERALD and EMIT designed to meet the training needs of professional medical physicists. The program has been developed over a number of years by collaboration between hospitals and universities across Europe. The program concentrates on assisting competence development in five initial areas: diagnostic radiology; nuclear medicine; magnetic resonance tomography; ultrasound; and radiotherapy. Each of the topic areas includes around 50 training tasks in five hypertext workbooks, supplemented by a topical image database. The training materials have been extensively refereed during the development phase and are now in use in 65 countries across the globe. Initial evaluation has shown that the material enhances the training experience and produces a more consistent output.