By Nick Kowalczyk

Medical and physical therapy professors used to have their pupils feel strands of hair under pages in a phone book, tracing the hairs' subtle contours. The exercise was designed to heighten students' sense of touch -- a skill that would make for a faster diagnosis of muscle injuries or other problems.

Today, students practice diagnosis-by-touch on dummies -- which provide realistic dimensions but little flexibility -- or on other students, whose relative health fails to offer the injuries students need to feel.

Fine tuning the sense of touch may soon become an easier lesson to teach with the aid of a "Virtual Haptic Back," a computer program that lets students "feel" the bumps, tightness and disorders in an unhealthy back -- all from a seat in front of a monitor.

An interdisciplinary team of four Ohio University researchers developed the software, which mimics everything from spinal curvatures to muscle spasms. To ensure humans could feel the back on the computer screen, the researchers applied haptics, the science of touch that uses an interface to transmit real-life sensations from virtual-reality models on a computer, said team member Bob Williams, an associate professor of mechanical engineering.

"We're trying to sensitize students' fingers, but in a controlled manner," said Bob Conatser, a biomedical sciences lab research associate and the research team's computer programmer.

The researchers recruited a volunteer to serve as a model and created a digital, 3-D map of his back. Their program works like this: When a student sits in front of the monitor, he sees a simulated back with skin and a vertebral column. Virtual reality software in a thimble-shaped tube attached to an 8-inch-tall metal crane (the haptic interface) allows the student to "touch" the virtual back. As the student moves his finger, a green circle-shaped cursor moves across the back and vertebral column on the screen.

Each vertebra has a different level of tightness, which can be felt through the thimble. Sliding his finger down the spinal column, the student senses the bumps and divots of the spinal column -- just as if he were touching a human back. The student also can diagnose and practice rotating a misaligned vertebra using his sense of touch -- all on a computer.

The initial phase of the program, supported by an 1804 Fund grant, is complete. Now, researchers plan to make the virtual haptic back more realistic, using feedback from experts and students as a guide.

The project recently received a $1.1 million grant from the Osteopathic Heritage Foundation, which will support further development and testing of the software, which could eventually be marketed to other medical colleges.

In addition to Conatser and Williams, the team includes John Howell, associate professor of physiology, mechanical engineering graduate student Mayank Srivastava and Drs. Tony Chila and John Eland, both in the College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Nick Kowalcyzk was a writing intern in the Office of Research Communications