Touch is how we confirm reality. His team is working on projects that centrally use the Phantom, such as Virtual Environments for Training Electronics Troubleshooting. Touch, von Wiegand said, is giving virtual reality a new dimension. That's exactly what Sarah Gibson believes. Tissues such as healthy brain tissue and tumors might be visually indistinguishable, but they feel very different.
Surgeons also rely heavily on their sense of touch when cutting or suturing tissues.
After a doctor scans a person, he has to take this 3-D data and somehow interpret it. But the best he can do right now is to 'slice' the data into a two-dimensional plane and then show it on a screen. GE has written a program that uses a Phantom and actually allows a user to go in and touch this 3-D data. For instance, you can go in and touch a tumor. You can feel the nasal passages, the ear canal.