an Educational Software Project for Cardiovascular Physiology
MOTD | Meetings | Background | Proposal | Team | Download | Links
Monday, May 19, 2003
Ryan found a bug with the scenario controls (clicking on the stop-button
when scenarios are deactivated) and a small typo in the tutorial. I fixed
them both.
Sunday, May 11, 2003
I fixed a slight problem with animation initialization when you click the
Visualizer link up top.
Saturday, May 10, 2003
I made a small addition to the grapher code so that the animation doesn't
lag as badly when the user holds down the mouse button on a slider but doesn't
actually change the value. The final demo day is this Monday from 4-6pm.
Thursday, May 8, 2003
Ryan made an adjustment to the grapher's intersection code. I also added
cursor-changing mouseovers for the tutorial, so you have a better idea of where
you can and can't click.
Tuesday, May 6, 2003
I found a small bug in the scenario playback controls. After fixing that,
I got some feedback from a few people. How do you quit in the stand-alone
version? ESC. That's not too obvious. I agree. Sorry.
It's fixed now, and I have to reiterate how frustrating Director is.
Anyway, Damien made some adjustments to the highlighting of the blood and the pause
button yesterday as well. So checkout the fixed version, with a
visible option to quit this time. If the program is malfunctioning, you
may have downloaded a bad version; a good version should be posted up and guaranteed to
work by tomorrow at the latest. If you find any other problems, please
contact us. We will try to fix problems ASAP for as
long as we can manage or until somebody else takes over. I think my biggest gripe
right now is that it doesn't
run any faster. Maybe future work on this project can optimize the speed.
Again, if you're interested in obtaining our code or continuing work on CardioViz, please email either Professor Stein
or us.
Monday, May 5, 2003
Final in-class demos begin today at 4pm. Be sure to check out the
other CS092 projects,
definitely worth taking a look; everybody's worked hard this semester. Our
project is now technically complete; find our demo presentation outline
here. Check out the new download page.
Professor Stein is considering continued work on this project, so I guess our
version can be considered 1.0. We did not complete all of our original
project proposal, but this was expected, because the design, setup, and
requirements kept changing as we went along, especially after meetings with
Professor Stein. We did not get to sounds, narration, in-depth math
tutorials, flowchart visualizations, screen resizing, a glossary reference, and
different heart types. However, our project is still very substantial and
accurately models and simulates many factors of the cardiovascular system.
An abridged version of things we had to fix and do can be found
here. What would have been cool was a
scenario-editor, which Professor Stein showed interest for, possibly as a summer
project. We also believe that had we implemented the program in Java, the
animation might have been a lot smoother and possibly more stable; we had our
share of Director nightmares while coding late nights in the CIT. But
overall, this project has been a valuable and gainful experience for all of us.
We look forward to seeing how well BI080 students will benefit from using it.
If you are interested in obtaining our code or continuing our work, please
email us.
Friday, May 2, 2003
We met with Professor Stein today for final tips, suggestions, advice, and
comments before the big demo day on Monday. We've added many features
since the prototype demo, including sliders, correct graphing, a simple help
system, and overall improved accuracy and depiction of the model.
Professor Stein is going to get back to us ASAP on what values are to be
expected for certain scenarios, such as a heart attack or blood loss. He
will also tell us what he wants in the text descriptions for certain parts of
the model. We're in the homestretch, and we hope all the time and effort
we've put in will pay off when we demo the program on Monday.
Monday, April 21, 2003
Prototype for animation and grapher are here. We're waiting for some feedback from Professor Stein.
Most likely we'll still be making changes before the prototype demo on
Wednesday.
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
You can find our paper here. It delves into some
issues that past medical educational software have encountered and elucidates a
bit on how CardioViz will deal with all of it.
Friday, April 4, 2003
Already chosen 2 articles and completed a first draft of the paper.
Revision soon to follow during weekend.
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
We're trying to get our thoughts together for a paper relating to our project;
most likely we'll get to actually writing it after Spring Break.
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Storyboard presentation today. Got some useful feedback..
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Our storyboard presentation is ready for tomorrow. A run-through in
PowerPoint form is here.
Friday, March 7, 2003
We met with Professor Stein today. Asked a lot of questions to help
clarify the storyboard, including questions about details of the actual
illustrations, animation, and layout. We should be presenting our
storyboard to the class on Wednesday.
Sunday, March 2, 2003
Team meeting today. Thought up some ideas for storyboard, but we're
going to have to meet with Professor Stein at least one more time to finalize
it; emailed him today to schedule an appointment. We also discussed some
features that we want to include and also started sketching some screenshots to
get a general idea of the layout. Damien completed an intro screen for our
program which links to the grapher. We've named our project "CardioViz."
Ryan's been doing some work on the math involved, which is often overlooked or
glossed over by most cardiovascular physiologists. We're thinking about
having some tutorials for our program, but we're keeping that as a last priority
until the basic animation is completed. Some form of server for all of us
to access the code and project files would be nice. We're going to ask
about getting project space tomorrow.
Friday,
February, 28, 2003
I've completed a prototype for making graphs in Director. The graph is
static because it's hardcoded in, but that shouldn't be a problem since the
details of the actual graphing should be controlled by us anyway. You can
change around margins and axes properties. See it in action
here. We're going to meet this weekend
for gathering together what we've done so far and do some storyboard
planning.
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
Damien bought a copy of Director 8
and Lingo Bible by John Nyquist. I'm probably going to buy the other
book Special Edition Using Macromedia Director 8.5 by Gary Rosenzweig
online, since the bookstore didn't seem to have it. We are planning to
have a basic graphing mechanism implemented in Director by Friday. If we
have time, hopefully we'll have a basic intro screen and menu for navigation.
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
We're down one person; David can't join us this semester for our project. Damien and I are going to start looking into Director and Lingo. Ryan, in
the meantime, is thinking up some math formulas for the graphs we need.
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Went over details of our project with June after class today.
Basically outlined all of the major points that Professor Stein touched upon
yesterday.
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
We met with Professor Stein today to get a first introductory tutorial of
the cardiovascular system. Professor Stein also reemphasized the essential
elements of this project that would facilitate his teaching. Revised
project proposal is here.
Monday, February
10, 2003
Professor Stein couldn't make it to his office this
morning. We're rescheduling the meeting again for tomorrow at 12:30PM.
Saturday, February 8, 2003
We should be meeting with Professor Stein on Monday morning.
Thursday, February 6, 2003
Received word from Professor Stein that he can't meet this Friday.
We'll probably meet with him next week.
Tuesday, February 4, 2003
We're planning to meet after class tomorrow to brainstorm a few ideas.
Saturday, February 1, 2003
Professor Stein's full project proposal received.
Thursday, January 30, 2003
Project team finalized. Check us out here.
Questions, comments, or suggestions? Email