Future Trends of Virtual, Augmented Reality, and Games for Health

Serious game is now a multi-billion dollar industry and is still growing steadily in many sectors. As a major subset of serious games, designing and developing Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and serious games or adopting off-the-shelf games to support medical education, rehabilitation, or promote health has become a promising frontier in the healthcare sector since 2004, because games technology is inexpensive, widely available, fun and entertaining for people of all ages, with various health conditions and different sensory, motor, and cognitive capabilities. In this chapter, we provide the reader an overview of the book with a perspective of future trends of VR, AR simulation and serious games for healthcare

SELF-IMAGE MULTIMEDIA TECHNOLOGIES FOR FEEDFORWARD OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING

This dissertation investigates the development and use of self-images in augmented reality systems for learning and learning-based activities. This work focuses on self- modeling, a particular form of learning, actively employed in various settings for therapy or teaching. In particular, this work aims to develop novel multimedia systems to support the display and rendering of augmented self-images. It aims to use interactivity (via games) as a means of obtaining imagery for use in creating augmented self-images. Two multimedia systems are developed, discussed and analyzed. The proposed systems are validated in terms of their technical innovation and their clinical efficacy in delivering behavioral interventions for young children on the autism spectrum

Motion Capture for Telemedicine: A Review of Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Kinect, and PlayStation Move

Access to healthcare has been and continues to be difficult for many around the world. With the introduction of telemedicine, this impediment to attaining medical care has been lifted. Although many avenues of telemedicine exist (and have yet to exist), the use of home video game consoles such as the Nintendo Wii®, Microsoft Kinect®, and PlayStation Move® can be used to measure patient progress outside of the office. Due to the nature of each individual console/system, some unique characteristics exist that allow each system to provide its own clinical potential. A comparative analysis of the clinical implications of the Nintendo Wii®, Microsoft Kinect®, and PlayStation Move® showed that with its ease of use and dynamic accuracy, the Microsoft Kinect® offered the most benefit. With further exploration, using the Microsoft Kinect® for telemedicine will be able to improve medical efficiency and hopefully health outcomes

Atelier : assistive thechnologies for learning, integration and reabilitation

A special needs individual is a broad term used to describe a person with a behavioural or emotional disorder, physical disability or learning disability. Many individuals with special needs are limited in verbal communication, or in many cases non-verbal, making communication and learning a challenging task. Additionally, new forms of communication based on technology aren´t designed for them, making them increasingly isolated in social and educational terms. In spite of this, and fortunately, new forms of interaction do exist and they enable these particular users to access knowledge and provide them with the ability to interact with others, undertaking otherwise impossible. In this project the technology used will not be an end in itself but only a way to “drop” the mouse/keyboard paradigm making use of affordable devices available in the market that could be adopted by people with special needs that are unable to apply the traditional forms of interaction, thus assisting people in their education, integration and rehabilitation activities.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Motion-based technology to support motor skills screening in developing children: A scoping review

Background. Acquiring motor skills is fundamental for children's development since it is linked to cognitive development. However, access to early detection of motor development delays is limited. Aim. This review explores the use and potential of motion-based technology (MBT) as a complement to support and increase access to motor screening in developing children. Methods. Six databases were searched following the PRISMA guidelines to search, select, and assess relevant works where MBT recognised the execution of children's motor skills. Results. 164 studies were analysed to understand the type of MBT used, the motor skills detected, the purpose of using MBT and the age group targeted. Conclusions. There is a gap in the literature aiming to integrate MBT in motor skills development screening and assessment processes. Depth sensors are the prevailing technology offering the largest detection range for children from age 2. Nonetheless, the motor skills detected by MBT represent about half of the motor skills usually observed to screen and assess motor development. Overall, research in this field is underexplored. The use of multimodal approaches, combining various motion-based sensors, may support professionals in the health domain and increase access to early detection programmes.Funding for open access charge: Universidad de Málaga / CBUA

Implementation of Open Source applications “Serious Game” for rehabilitation

Serious Games and Virtual Reality (VR) are present nowadays as an alternative to traditional rehabilitation therapies. This project describes the workflow to develop videogames for health monitoring as well as a source of entertainment for physiotherapy patients, primarily patients that suffer hemiparesis caused by a neurological disease like a stroke. We propose the last version of Microsoft Kinect sensors as low cost game controller and the software Unity to develop Open Source Rehabilitation Serious Games. These Serious Games try to imitate physiotherapy sessions performed in movement recovery therapies, reducing the waiting list of patients together with time and costs to hospitals. The premise is that the gameplay makes patients execute upper body exercises alongside equilibrium training, meanwhile they are monitored extracting useful data and results for the physicians.Ingeniería Biomédic

Assessment of manual dexterity in VR: Towards a fully automated version of the box and blocks test

© 2019 The authors and IOS Press. This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0). In recent years, the possibility of using serious gaming technology for the automation of clinical procedures for assessment of motor function have captured the interest of the research community. In this paper, a virtual version of the Box and Blocks Test (BBT) for manual dexterity assessment is presented. This game-like system combines the classical BBT mechanics with a play-centric approach to accomplish a fully automated test for assessing hand motor function, making it more accessible and easier to administer. Additionally, some variants of the traditional mechanics are proposed in order to fully exploit the advantages of the chosen technology. This ongoing research aims to provide the clinical practitioners with a customisable, intuitive, and reliable tool for the assessment and rehabilitation of hand motor function