High Definition Technology Now Reaches Into the Body (See the images)

Probably not many of you reading this are old enough to remember a movie called "Fantastic Voyage", with Rachel Welch, (heart throb of the '70s). But the movie was ground-breaking in it's cinematic effect and like many other prescient movies and novels of it's time, Fantastic Voyage envisioned a time when the largely unexplored realms of our own bodies could become the new adventure destination. Well folks, I'm here to tell you, the time has arrived.

On Sunday, Sept 16th on the National Geographic channel, a program on the way the new field of High Definition imaging is effecting medicine will be broadcast. Like Fantastic Voyage, we will see panoramic, 3d views of internal organs, but unlike the movie, these will not be special effects, but real.

Through a 5mm laparoscopic incision in the body, surgeons are now able to insert a tiny camera which produces images equivalent to what the eye can see, only better. because they are also magnified. As Dr. Steven Palter, of Gold Coast IVF in Syosset NY describes it, in this video from ABC News "we now can go beyond what the naked eye can see" into what he calls 'Future Vision". "[We are on a] revolutionary transformation of medicine", whereby these images may someday soon be able provide doctors with virtual surgeries, where they can practice with not only the benefit of realistic images but integrated with tactile feedback, for a complete , multi-sensory experience. Something called Haptic Visualization. "This is the beginning of an enabling technology", says Dr. Palter.

And as I stated in a previous posting, science's knowledge is doubling about every 7 years, sometimes interspersed with leaps, that represent exponential gains in understanding and insight. I believe that this new high resolution medical imaging technology represents just such a leap. For not only will it eventually enable the surgeon to practice at will on a realistic re-creation of the exact surgery you might someday undergo, but he or she will use the same technology to work inside your body, performing critical lifesaving procedures through a small incision. Procedures that currently require opening the body cavity, exposing us to infection and complications.

Again, remember, National Geographic channel, Sunday, Sept. 16, 2007. Here is a link to their site.

Maybe someday in the not too distant future, you will have Haptic Technology in your home and be able to experience television in a new onmi-sensory way. Not only seeing and hearing, but touching and being touched. Not unlike the Holodeck from the Starship Enterprise.

Sometimes fiction introduces us to un-real worlds and sometimes in leads us into future ones that only seem un-real.