Motor rehabilitation
Background
Annually, 12.2 million people worldwide suffer from stroke. The total number of people currently living with the consequences of a stroke is estimated to be around 80 million. They experience a reduced ability for self-care and participation in social activities. Limitations in the upper limb often lead to difficulties in reaching, grasping, and manipulating objects. Consequently, a decrease in Activities of Daily Living (ADL) tasks and a reduction in Quality of Life are observed.
In the pursuit of innovative approaches to occupational therapy rehabilitation, the emergence of Virtual Reality (VR) has revolutionized how we approach the rehabilitation of arm and hand functions.
What does it look like?
It allows for personalized exercises tailored to individual needs, offers immediate feedback and insight in performance, provides realistic simulations of daily activities, enhances motivation and engagement through interactive and game-like elements, enables repetition and intensity without monotony and provides flexibility and accessibility for patients to engage in rehabilitation exercises in various locations.
As part of the XRehab project, we co-created use cases with rehabilitation professionals and XR companies. We developed 3 prototypes to demonstrate what VR can offer as tool for the patient and the therapist. All prototypes are connected to an online dashboard for therapists to allow streaming, game settings and data visualization. We wanted to create a controllerfree and innovative environment. For this use case we used the Meta Quest 3 as hardware because of the inside out body tracking and accurate hand tracking.
Prototyping
The first prototype is a visual representation of the motor capabilities of the upper limb. This includes movement in the horizontal plane (forward and sideways arm motion on a table) and in the vertical plane for the patient (shoulder anteflexion).
The second prototype involves an exercise where the patient needs to grasp objects. The objects are presented within the patient's range of motion (ROM) field and just outside of it.
The third prototype are exercises designed to assess the usability of Quest 2 in arm/hand rehabilitation. This prototype includes three different tasks with varying levels of difficulty and can be utilized for both gross motor and fine motor exercises.
“Visual feedback is crucial in motor learning or relearning motor activities. The principle is to encourage and motivate people with motor limitations or those experiencing fear, pain, etc., to move by providing visual feedback during the execution of a movement.”
— member XRehab