The National Cancer Center Hospital is introducing a virtual-reality exposure therapy to ease cancer patients' pain and nausea, according to hospital officials.

Together with Mitsubishi Electric Corp., the hospital in Tokyo's Tsukiji district has developed a special device allowing patients to experience a virtual-reality environment while in bed, with tests on a group of patients yielding promising results, the officials said.

The therapy makes patients feel as if they are going for a walk in the woods by projecting onto a screen in front of them images of a forest.