Rehabilitation Games in Real-World Clinical Settings

Abstract

Upper-limb impairments due to stroke can severely affect the quality of life in patients. Scientific evidence supports that repetitive rehabilitation exercises can improve motor ability in stroke patients. Rehabilitation games gained tremendous interest among researchers and clinicians because of their potential to make the seemingly mundane, enduring rehabilitation therapies more engaging. However, routine and longitudinal use of rehabilitation games in real-world clinical settings has not been investigated in depth. Particularly, we know little about current practices, challenges, and their potential impacts on therapeutic outcomes. To address this gap, we established a partnership with a rehabilitation hospital where game-assisted rehabilitation was routinely employed over a 2-year period. We then conducted an observational study, in which we observed 11 game-assisted therapy sessions and interviewed 15 therapists who moderated the therapy. Significant findings include (1) different engagement patterns of stroke patients in game-assisted therapy, (2) imperative roles of therapists in moderating games and challenges that therapists face during game-assisted therapy, and (3) lack of support for therapists in delivering patient-centered, personalized therapy to individual stroke patients. Furthermore, we discuss design implications for more effective rehabilitation game therapies that take into consideration both patients and therapists and their specific needs.

Towards Effective Telerehabilitation: Assessing Effects of Applying Augmented Reality in Remote Rehabilitation of Patients Suffering from Multiple Sclerosis

“…The idea of rehabilitation carried out with the help of digital technologies is gaining traction and interest over the recent years [19,39,54]. Furthermore, the present-day mass-market adoption of the immersive technology brought new promise related to the application of such interfaces to patient rehabilitation [10,38,41].…”

Modeling the Noticeability of User-Avatar Movement Inconsistency for Sense of Body Ownership Intervention

“…Therapeutically appropriate rehabilitation is crucial to post-surgery motor function recovery for stroke patients [17,46,47,56]. We propose to provide virtual motor performance improvement to motivate patients and thus to boost engagement [13,19,40] in rehabilitation exercises. In order to enable the patients to embody the virtual avatar, VR rehabilitation has a high requirement for body ownership.…”

“…The motivating stroke rehabilitation application aims to provide a body illusion that requires high body ownership. We thus apply unnoticeable offsets to the virtual avatar's movement so that the user perceives a motor performance improvement virtually and therefore gains stronger engagement [13] (Fig 1D ); For the VR action game, which requires less body ownership, we adjust the level of the offset to change the demand for physical effort from users(Fig 1E ); Augmenting input on tasks such as widget arrangement sacrifices body ownership for augmentation functionalities. We thus apply strong offsets to amplify the user's motion to reduce users' physical burden (Fig 1F).…”

A Novel Approach for Upper Limb Functionality Assessment Based on Deep Learning and Multimodal Sensing Data

“…In this study, inertial sensors are used to capture the user's physical rehabilitation movement data, which can more intuitively reflect the user's rehabilitation training situation. With the advancement of modern electronic technology, image sequence processing and analysis through video surveillance can accurately evaluate and analyze the actions and behaviors of the people in images [43]. Alana et al [44] designed a Kinect-based shoulder and elbow rehabilitation training system that can display joint mobility in real time and guide patients' nonstandard rehabilitation actions.…”