Ever heard of something soft as an unborn baby’s skin?

A software package designed by an Albuquerque, N.M., company will let parents “feel” their baby’s face or hands before the child is born.

It adds the sense of touch to a 3-D ultrasound scan, which takes video of a baby in the womb.

“A 3-D ultrasound is almost like making a home movie of your unborn baby,” said Tom Anderson, CEO of Novint Technologies, which invented the software.

“I’ve seen my baby lift up his hand and touch his face. With our software, we can load those images into a computer and touch the baby.”

The company recently demonstrated the technology to explain how the software could some day change prenatal visits for expectant mothers and fathers.

Traditional ultrasound exams at best produce an image of the fetus that takes a trained technician to understand. These developments could link parents and their baby in the womb in a whole new way.

Novint’s first product was software that adds the sense of touch to remote exploration in the oil and gas industry. During the past two years it has started developing medical, automotive and video game products.

	What is haptics?Haptics (pronounced HAP-tiks) is the science of applying touch (tactile) sensation and control to interaction with computers.By using special input/output devices (joysticks, data gloves), users can receive feedback in the form of sensations in the hand or other parts of the body.In combination with a visual display, haptics technology can be used to train people for tasks requiring hand-eye coordination, such as surgery and space ship manuevers.

But when Anderson’s wife became pregnant last year he got excited about the idea of a new product one that would let him touch his unborn son.

Anderson helped pioneer the science of haptics or adding the sense of touch to computer environments at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque from 1995 to 2000.

He spun Novint out of the labs in 2000, with Sandia’s help as an investor. Manhattan Scientifics, a Santa Fe, N.M., firm, also jumped in as a major investor in 2000.

Novint’s product adds a joystick-like device sort of like a 3-D mouse to a computer. The device has motors inside that resist movements, providing a sense of texture and structure. So when a parent uses the device to probe a 3-D image of his child, it will feel like the device is physically touching the child.

“When the 3-D cursor touches something on the screen, the motors turn on,” Anderson said. “You can tell the difference between skin textures and features. It sounds like you’re prodding it with a pen, but it’s actually a lot more realistic than you might think.”

Doctors say they aren’t yet sure what the diagnostic benefits of the software will be, but at least one doctor says adding the sense of touch to the arsenal of imaging systems can only bode well.

“The more senses we add to any process looking at and being able to touch something that is quite delectable adds something to that process,” said Glenroy Heywood, a surgeon at University of New Mexico Hospital.

“We can see the data, but touching the data adds another dimension. We have great visualization systems, but what we’ve been missing is the sense of touch.”

The software is still being tested but could be available commercially in the next few months, Anderson said.