HOUSTON -
Walk into a small, dark room in the Medical Center and you can virtually walk into the body of someone else.
It's groundbreaking technology developed at Methodist Hospital.
They call the room "Plato's Cave," after the famous philosopher, and a story about a better way to see things.
No one has seen the human body like this before. A 3-D image projected from a multi-touch table. The system takes a basic black and white CT-Scan image and creates a color 3-D image.
Doctor E. Brian Butler helped come up with the idea. He says its kind of like looking at a slices of bread. Just like you can stack slices of bread, you can stack CT images and create the image seen in Plato's Cave.
Butler says it can be a great teaching tool to students, and it also creates a more detailed road map before surgery.
This technology is possible because graphic cards used in video games are more powerful than just a few years ago. Just like video game designers create virtual worlds--this system uses the same principles.
Dr. Butler even uses an Xbox game controller to maneuver through images that are 360 degrees.
It's groundbreaking technology developed at Methodist Hospital.
They call the room "Plato's Cave," after the famous philosopher, and a story about a better way to see things.
No one has seen the human body like this before. A 3-D image projected from a multi-touch table. The system takes a basic black and white CT-Scan image and creates a color 3-D image.
Doctor E. Brian Butler helped come up with the idea. He says its kind of like looking at a slices of bread. Just like you can stack slices of bread, you can stack CT images and create the image seen in Plato's Cave.
Butler says it can be a great teaching tool to students, and it also creates a more detailed road map before surgery.
This technology is possible because graphic cards used in video games are more powerful than just a few years ago. Just like video game designers create virtual worlds--this system uses the same principles.
Dr. Butler even uses an Xbox game controller to maneuver through images that are 360 degrees.
