Virtual reality boosts rehab efforts

In another scenario that takes a patients down a winding road, the platform lurches with every curve, tilts back and forth over hills and simulates various terrain with vibrations. The patients also can try to "catch" objects floating by — with sensors on their hands — while maintaining balance.

Dr. Itzhak Siev-Ner, head of orthopedic rehabilitation at Sheba, said virtual reality helps his patients retrain their brains and bodies to function and works much faster than traditional rehabilitation methods.

"The system helps to strengthen muscles, to improve your stability, balance, and to translate it to everyday life," he said. "The integration of all these activities — and this is oversimplifying it — enhances the plasticity of the central nervous system."

Siev-Ner said the video game scenarios, which keep scores to allow doctors to monitor progress, distract the patient from pain and involve more complex coordination than normal physical therapy.

"It's like the patient is the joystick of the system ," Siev-Ner said. "Although it can be fun, after 20 minutes they are sweating to hell."

Since Sheba's system came into regular use in 2005, it has logged 600 hours of rehabilitation time with more than 50 patients.

Dr. Michael Yochelson, medical director for brain injury programs at National Rehabilitation Hospital in Washington, D.C., said there is a bright future for virtual reality in medicine.

"It's something that looks very promising and there's a lot of research going on in that area now," he said. "It allows for reproducing different scenarios that we can't necessarily reproduce in the clinic."

It is no accident that the first clinical use of virtual reality is in Israel, where a perpetual state of war has led to a constant flow of casualties.

"Unfortunately there is a quite a good industry here," said Oshri Even-Zohar, the Israeli who first conceived the system in 1990 but said the necessary computer technology wasn't available for seven years. Even-Zohar built the prototype in the Netherlands using a grant from the European Commission.

A new scenario being developed will be set in the aisles of a supermarket, where the patient will have to pick items from the shelves and bring them to the virtual cashier — a decision-oriented game particularly helpful for recovery from brain injuries.

Over the next two years, next-generation models will be installed in Brooke Army Medical Center in Houston and Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C., Even-Zohar said.

Yochelson, the American doctor, said it is a sign that the U.S. market for innovative rehabilitation is also growing.

"We always see a lot more advances in amputee care and prosthetics during war time," he said. "Israel has the population to support that. Unfortunately, now our military does too."

MORE FROM INNOVATION

Innovation Section Front

New airport screeners could save time, energy When will plug-in cars pay off? Earthquake concerns shake energy projects Device mimics human muscle size and strength New device could improve marksmanship Solar power coming to a store near you Device powers cell phone using car's wake Machine allows people to type with their minds Scientists, lawyers mull effects of home robots Balloon hunt nets $40,000 for MIT-led team Innovation Section Front   Add Innovation headlines to your news reader: