TECH

Virtual reality allows physiotherapy to be done at home 

Virtual reality (VR) can help physiotherapy patients successfully complete their exercises at home, thanks to researchers from Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) at Warwick University, UK. They were able to combine RV technology with 3D motion capture.
The physiotherapy currently prescribed generally requires patients to perform regular exercises at home. Outside the clinic, patients rarely receive other guidance than a brochure of sketches or static photographs to instruct them to complete their exercises. This leads to a low adhesion, with patients becoming anxious not to exercise the right, or simply getting bored with the repetition of the movements.
The advent of consumer virtual reality technology combined with 3D motion capture allows real movements to be accurately translated into an avatar that can be viewed in a virtual environment. Researchers at the WMG Institute of Digital Healthcare are investigating whether this technology can be used to provide counseling to physiotherapy patients, providing a virtual physiotherapist at home to demonstrate prescribed exercises. An article about the research, published in “PLOS One” magazine, addressed the question of whether people are able to accurately follow the movements of a virtual avatar.
Researchers investigated whether people could coordinate and accurately track the movements of an avatar in a virtual environment. They asked the participants to synchronize in time with an avatar viewed through an RV device.
Follow the avatar
Without the knowledge of the participants, the researchers slowed down or subtly accelerated one of the avatar stages, so that the participants had to correct their own step movement to stay in time. The effect that this correction had on the timing of the steps and on synchronization with the avatar was measured.
"If the participants corrected their own steps to accompany the avatar, we would know that they were able to accurately follow the movements they were observing,” commented WMG's main author Omar Khan. "We found that the participants struggled to keep time only if visual information was present. However, when we added realistic step sounds, in addition to visual information, more realistic multi-sensory information allowed participants to follow the avatar accurately.”
Mark Elliott, the project's lead researcher at WMG, said: "there is enormous potential for consumer RV technologies to be used to provide guidance to physiotherapy exercises, but also to make exercises more interesting. This study focused on the crucial question of how people can follow a virtual guide."
Theo Arvanitis, co-author and director of the WMG Institute of Digital Healthcare, added: “Our work and our digitally enabled technological solution can sustain transformative health innovations to impact the field of physiotherapy and have a direct benefit in the rehabilitation of patients. Now, we plan to investigate other types of movements that work in close partnership with physiotherapists, to establish the areas of physiotherapy that will benefit most from this technology.”

Credit: University of Warwick