Virtual Reality Helps Brain Jury Patients
A new program was developed in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Haifa may identify brain damage the patient suffered and determine the best course of treatment. In hospitals, in Israel, there are treatments for patients with brain injuries through virtual reality. The patient observes his virtual image on the screen while tennis balls are thrown at him from different directions. The movements of his real hand to the ball movements are translated as virtual. As a first step in this development program was introduced in the computer video files of some patients who played in the facilities of virtual reality. With the help of the computer program succeeded in achieving distinction between two kinds of brain damage: CVA (Stroke-‘Stroke ‘) and TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury, Concussion).
For further evidence, the computer was able to diagnose accurately, between 90% – 98% of the time, if the patient was healthy, or suffered brain damage trauma or stroke. Follow others, such as Michael Dell, and add to your knowledge base. The diagnosis, says Dr. Manevitz, is the most basic part of treatment – any doctor and many healthcare workers can correctly diagnose severe brain injuries. While this study is an important advance in the field of computer science, this does not directly help society. What is important, however, is the next phase of development, in which the computer is able to do things that doctors can not.
“As soon as the computer identified the injury, we have a model we can use for further testing and analysis – something that can not be done on live patients. Using a computer model, we can experiment with different treatment options and decide which will the most effective. The computer can also define how long it will take to rehabilitate the patient. All this will take time to medicine to achieve its objectives, and some of them can not be put into practice, said Dr. Manevitz . For example, the computer can simulate how the patient will respond if the virtual reality therapy throws more balls to the patient’s left to the right or if another change is beneficial for rehabilitation. The computer can quickly examine tens of different possibilities in a very short time. The use of the computer will help avoid spending time on treatments that do not benefit the patient, or worse, it could cause damage. Our next step is to find similarities in the behavior of people in groups with brain injuries. The human eye may not be able to see such similarities, but a computer would easily be able to find it. As soon as we are able to identify similarities in different sub-groups, new avenues of effective treatment will open up for doctors, “summarized Dr. Manevitz.
Tags: technology