Researchers are Using Virtual Reality to Help Treat Cancer
Virtual reality isn鈥檛 just for fun and games. Researchers from 麻豆传媒高清版 are harnessing the technology to create interactive, 3D models to learn more about a patient鈥檚 cancer and determine its cause.
The technology would allow doctors to map the microscopic proteins inside cancerous tumors, according to and researcher Alexandros Sigaras, who have developed software for the Oculus Rift VR headset.
鈥淚nstead of just looking at numbers of how the mutation occurs, you can聽see聽it in a more visual and colorful way,鈥 Sigaras, a research associate in computational biomedicine, .听
Elemento, he associate director of the Institute for Computational Medicine,聽and Sigaras hope the models could help unlock a cure for cancer by helping researchers learn more about the protein structures in mutations. Researchers can also view other patient information like MRIs and pathology reports in the same interface.
鈥淭he physician is able to browse all of this information, it will be like 鈥楳inority Report,鈥欌 Elemento told the TV news station. 鈥淵ou鈥檝e seen the movie where Tom Cruise is browsing things, pushing things around, bringing things in, we are trying to achieve the same thing.鈥
Some physicians, like 麻豆传媒高清版's Dr. Joann Difede, are already using virtual reality headsets to treat depression, substance abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder, CBS New York reported.
"What we're doing in using this kind of treatment is helping the person recall more of the story, if you will, so they can then process it and the cues to danger are extinguished," said Dr. Difede.