Teams vie for 'Avatar' advantage

In the endless quest for athletic advantage, a handful of American major league baseball teams are engaged in an elaborate, largely clandestine race to master an advanced imaging technology that some think could influence the way athletes of all ages train, perform and recover from injuries.

The technology is an unlikely hybrid. It combines the technology that captures the human gestures at the core of three-dimensional animations like "Avatar" with advanced sensors, biomechanics and orthopedic research on the most powerful and least damaging ways to hurl a ball, swing a bat or simply run like the wind.

Essentially, the technique produces a full, three-dimensional representation on a computer that can be viewed from any direction, run forward and backward, and analyzed to calculate precise limb angles and accelerations, stresses on joints, ball speeds and the G-forces that produce them.