Last January, a team at the Champalimaud Clinical Centre, in Lisbon, successfully tested the precision of a novel, non-invasive, 100% digital method for locating cancerous breast tumours “on the fly” during surgery. For the first time in operating room settings, a surgeon fitted with an “augmented reality” headset was able to visualise, in real-time, a virtual image of the tumour to be extracted from inside the patient’s body. 

Randy Pausch’s story is both a tragic and a generous one. He was an American computer science professor and virtual reality wizard at the University of Carnegie Mellon, in Pittsburgh, who died of pancreatic cancer in July 2008, at the age of 47.