Virtual reality boosts rehab efforts

TEL AVIV, Israel - On most days, a tumor on Zvulun Muola's spinal cord keeps him confined to a wheelchair, but today he is standing on a small, wooden dinghy gliding downstream, navigating between the islands of a tropical paradise.

Muola, whose legs are partially paralyzed, is among a handful of disabled patients in Israel using  the Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment.

The virtual-reality system puts patients at the helm of a life-size video game, forces them to use atrophied muscles and teaches the basic skills necessary to recover from severe injuries and disorders.

"It gives more confidence," said Muola, standing shakily on a moving platform, sandwiched between a walker and a physical therapist. "It's hard at the beginning but once you get the hang of it ... it improves stability and helps the patient trust himself."

The $650,000 computer system at the Chaim Sheba Rehabilitation Hospital near Tel Aviv is the only one of only a dozen worldwide in clinical use. The others are still in the research phase. But doctors using the system say it can cut rehabilitation times and make the process far easier by helping distract patients from their pain.

More than half of the Tel Aviv hospital's patients — most of them amputees — were maimed by suicide bombs or wounded in last summer's war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Sgt. Idan Borovski, 23, was wounded in a Lebanese village when shrapnel from a Hezbollah anti-tank missile ripped through a crowd of soldiers, killing nine and injuring 30. The metal shards severed the nerves and muscles in Borovski's foot, leaving him with little feeling and limited use of his leg.

"For one thing it was fun," Borovski said of his two training sessions with the virtual-reality system. "You are actually in a game. You are playing. You don't notice the pain and you can work harder."

The system immerses the patients in a fully reactive virtual and physical environment, using tiny sensors placed on the body, 12 high-speed infrared cameras, a moving platform that reacts to the patients' weight distribution and a life-size 3-D projection screen.

The system simulates daily activities like taking a walk in an urban environment, driving a car, hiking up and down a mountain or — like Muola on the dinghy — steering a boat. The scenarios teach patients to stay balanced and react to situations they will face in the real world.

The dinghy can be steered by leaning in left or right, forward and back, between a slalom of checkpoints and land masses to reach the finish line.

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