What is it about?

Modern immersive virtual reality experiences have the unique potential to motivate patients undergoingphysical therapy for performing intensive repetitive task-based treatment and can be utilized to collect real-time user data to track adherence and compliance rates. This article reports the design and evaluation of animmersive virtual reality game using the HTC Vive for upper limb rehabilitation, titled “Project Star Catcher”(PSC), aimed at users with hemiparesis. The game mechanics were adapted from modified Constraint InducedTherapy (mCIT), an established therapy method where users are asked to use the weaker arm by physicallybinding the stronger arm. Our adaptation changes the physical to psychological binding by providing varioustypes of immersive stimulation to influence the use of the weaker arm. PSC was evaluated by users withcombined developmental and physical impairments as well as stroke survivors. The results suggest that wewere successful in providing a motivating experience for performing mCIT as well as a cost-effective solutionfor real-time data capture during therapy. We conclude the article with a set of considerations for immersivevirtual reality therapy game design.

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Why is it important?

We have developed a novel implementation which an a incorporates a beneficial therapy method for stroke rehabilitation with an immersive virtual reality game for physical therapy patients to use. We illustrate that our implementation of immersive Virtual Reality can increase accessibility, accuracy, and affordability of therapy.

Perspectives

Given the increasing use virtual reality for therapy, we believe that the findings presented in our paper will appeal to VR experts, HCI experts, and physical therapists. Oftentimes, people with disabilities are underrepresented in the focus of new technological and scientific research, which we include in the design and analysis of the system presented in this study.

Aviv Elor
University of California, Santa Cruz

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: Project Star Catcher, ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing, December 2018, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3265755.
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