Benjamin Warf, a renowned neurosurgeon at Boston Children's Hospital, stands in the MIT.nano Immersion Lab. More than 3,000 miles away, his virtual avatar stands next to Matheus Vasconcelos in Brazil as the resident practices delicate surgery on a doll-like model of a baby's brain. With a pair of virtual-reality goggles, Vasconcelos is able to watch Warf's avatar demonstrate a brain surgery procedure before replicating the technique himself and while asking questions of Warf's digital twin. And that's the goal: Warf's digital twin bridged the distance, allowing him to be functionally in two places at once. 'It was my first training using this model, and it had excellent performance,' says Vasconcelos, a neurosurgery resident at Santa Casa de Sao Paulo School of Medical Sciences in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 'As a resident, I now feel more confident and comfortable applying the technique in a real patient under the guidance of a professor.' Warf's avatar arrived via a new project launched by...
learn more
