An Xbox game controller isn’t the typical tool of choice for surgeons, but behind the walls of a nondescript building in the shadow of the Texas Medical Center, it’s an invaluable instrument. So are a computer mouse, a touch screen table monitor and projectors.

This is the future of medicine and can only be found only at Methodist Hospital’s Plato’s Cave.

Unlike many medical centers or hospitals, there is no sterile feel or scent in Plato’s Cave. The walls are painted a warm reddish hue — and soft lighting and the gentle whir of computers create a womb-like feel, which makes sense considering the medical advancements born there. Dr. E. Brian Butler, chairman of radiation oncology at Methodist, created Plato’s Cave to cut through the shades of gray found on traditional X-rays.

The result is an up close and detailed look at a patient and his or her illness, without ever having to make an incision.

“We are breaking through old ways of thought,” Butler says. “This allows us to look at things the way we never have before.”

Through technology developed by gamers, video game engineers, Paul Sovelius, Jr., (a scientific computing and visualization specialist at Methodist) and Dr. Butler, slices of images from CT, MRI and PET Scans are stacked on top of one another, reconstructing a 3D image through computer data, which is then projected on a screen. The complex layers of the human body come alive in the most infinite detail, allowing doctors to map out and visualize a personalized treatment plan for each patient.

Doctors use the gaming controls to fly through a blood vessel three millimeters in size or zoom through the colon, watching out for polyps.

As with all technology, advances are ongoing. When the program was first introduced in 2009, doctors used specialized glasses to view the 3D images, but that’s no longer necessary. In fact, the technology has made major leaps in just the last two years and in August doctors will be able to use 40 different hand gestures while in surgery to communicate with the technology, showing how the same science behind Microsoft’s Kinect is just as useful in the operating room as the living room.

Soon, a post-operative patient will immediately be scanned from the operating table, the images sent back to Plato’s Cave for analysis and then transmitted back to the operating room 10 seconds later.

The benefits of Plato’s Cave are immeasurable and Butler feels this is the direction of modern medicine.

“The amount of time to do operations will decrease, the length of hospital stay and complication rates will decrease, so this will save money,” he says. “We will have a picture book of each person’s medical history and better understanding of diseases. We are moving into evidence-based medicine and this really levels the playing field for surgery.”

By doing virtual surgery, doctors can gauge things like depth perception. Butler explains the technology through film clips from movies like Lost in Space and Avatar, which superimpose a patient’s virtual body on top of his actual one. Plato’s Cave takes the concept even further with 4D printers, which take a 3D image with an actual recreation of a body part.

Next to the heat-activated touch screen monitor, a life-sized hand and forearm sits on the table. It belongs to Nancy Huynh who works in Plato’s Cave as the anatomical 3D visualization delineator in the Department of Radiation Oncology. Surgeons can practice on a body part before an operation and even create a specific tool to meet the needs of a particular patient.

Plato’s Cave technology is also a boon to bedside manner since patients get a straightforward look at their own bodies and the illness within.

“A patient is diagnosed with cancer and they are scared to death," Butler says. "We can go and show patients with an iPad and educate their patient so they can understand the disease better."

Technically CAVE stands for Computer Augmented Virtual Environment, but its roots lie in the literary. Greek philosopher Plato’s "The Allegory of the Cave" centers around a group of people chained to a wall in a cave facing a blank wall. The people see shadows on a wall and assume certain things about the shadow’s shapes, but it’s only when they are able to see what’s creating the shadow shapes do they begin to get a real understanding of what they are seeing.

Butler likens Methodist Hospital’s version of Plato’s Cave to the allegory because doctors can see the real strata, connected tissues and even movement and sound of the human body in real time and color. Ear, nose and throat specialists are among the doctors who are finding Plato’s Cave especially helpful in surgeries.

“We aren’t prisoners of previous thought processes,” Butler says and others agree.

St. Judes Children’s Research Hospital, the military and even Hollywood are interested in the technology. A writer for the X-Files found Plato’s Cave intriguing and modern medical tools clearly deserve top-billing in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Plato’s Cave was created in Houston and soon, Washington D.C. will be home to Socrates Cave, with more CAVEs expected to be constructed over time.

Something to think about the next time you sit down with Xbox controller in hand, ready to play Grand Theft Auto.