New 3D goggles help doctors search for mutations in cancerous tumors
Alex Sigaras demonstrates the Oculus virtual reality system
Researchers in New York are now using virtual reality to delve deep inside the human body in hopes of unlocking a cure for cancer.
Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine developed the genome sequencing software application.
Doctors wear a virtual reality headset to visualize protein structures in 3D space, searching for mutations in tumors.
" You would use both of your hands to stretch it and shrink it and that would allow you to grow or shrink the model. Now if I want to turn the model , I can use either my right hand or my left hand, depending on how I move it up or down or left and right and the model equally rotates," said Alex Sigaras, a researcher in the lab of Olivier Elemento, Ph.D.
The new 3D technology is already being used by medical fellows studying tumors.
This story appeared as a video segment on ABC7.
The Elemento Lab and Englander Institute for Precision Medicine also released a beta version of The Precision Medicine Knowledge Base to share information about tumor mutations.
