The surgeon studies the face of a teenage boy whose upper jaw and cheek were destroyed by cancer years ago. Lifting his gloved right hand, he points to an area just below one of the patient's eyes. As if by magic, an incision appears in the boy's cheek, revealing the area of tissue and bone to be rebuilt. Pointing again, the surgeon begins a complicated procedure for transplanting bone and tissue from the boy's hip to his face.

In the past, plastic surgeons had to be in the operating room to try procedures like these. Now some are using an experimental computer visualization tool called the Immersive Workbench, developed by researchers from Stanford University and NASA Ames Research Center, to plan and practice difficult operations. The software program combines data from CT scans, magnetic resonance images, and ultrasound to create high-resolution pictures of individual patients and display them in a virtual environment.