In Korea, there are various medical and industrial researchers who use radiation as part of their research. But radiation can cause extensive long-term damage in case of an accident. Therefore, national-level policy and training for the response workforce have been established for a professional response. Since 2002, the KIRAMS has been providing emergency medical response education based on the five mandatory contents (including legislation, protection measures, and emergency medicine).

The training content can be divided into theoretical and practical courses. Early education included theoretical courses on cases of accidents and their effects on the human body, as well as practical courses on treatment for contaminated patients. The current education program offers group practice using a HPS and mobile learning. As for the future of national radiation emergency education, the paradigm of education will change with the fourth industrial revolution, the advancement of the IT industry, and the advent of the ‘untact’ era. Therefore, research and development on XR technology–based educational content that can overcome reality’s constraints, is being conducted. Simulation-based education courses to increase effectiveness and immersion will be implemented.

Currently, there are approximately 900 radiation emergency medical personnel, and more than 30 new and supplementary education contents are provided each year to improve their proficiency and response abilities. Approximately eight types of content using XR technology will be developed and tested (2021-2023) before being implemented in actual education programs (2024). Advancements in education reflecting special conditions, such as COVID-19, and technological advancements will continue indefinitely.

Efforts are ongoing to improve the educational content and to train excellent radiation emergency medical personnel. With the implementation of XR technologies and new education trends, the future of national Korean radiation emergency medical education is expected to advance and diversify, and further improvements in the educational content can be expected.

The KIRAMS establishes radiological emergency institutions and provides training for emergency medical agents. However, because of the uniqueness of radioactive accidents, the current training program has a limitation in the realistic description. Therefore, training programs based on virtual augmented reality technology that can describe radiological emergencies are required. In this study, the contents of practical training for decontamination of radiation-contaminated patients as a part of radiation disaster prevention personnel training using VR simulator are developed.

Environments and devices required for treating patients with complex radiation damage are made visible using VR simulator to enable practical training of techniques and practices that will be required in actual radiation emergencies or training. The VR decontamination training content uses three Point tracking techniques to calculate the location of the head-mounted display device and the hand to visualize the movements. Additionally, Universal Render Pipeline technology was used to develop realistic visualizations of situations.

In this study, VR decontamination treatment practice content was developed, which allows a single trainee to go through the entire treatment process of treating radiation-contaminated patients. The radiation-exposed patient’s treatment process is composed of nine subprocesses, including wearing personal protective equipment, obtaining samples from openings, taking measurements, cleaning contaminated injuries, and so on. A checklist user interface was used to enable trainees to check their progress. The trainee can practice patient treatment with a controller while using VR decontamination treatment content. Additional functions such as narration, sound effects, animation, and so on were added to high educational effects.

In this study, VR decontamination treatment content was developed using VR training simulator to practice the treatment of radiation-contaminated patients. The results of this study will contribute to fostering the workforce response to radiation through efficient education using a VR training simulator, as well as promoting the use of radiation safety regulations.