2 research outputs found
Facilitating Self-monitored Physical Rehabilitation with Virtual Reality and Haptic feedback
Physical rehabilitation is essential to recovery from joint replacement
operations. As a representation, total knee arthroplasty (TKA) requires
patients to conduct intensive physical exercises to regain the knee's range of
motion and muscle strength. However, current joint replacement physical
rehabilitation methods rely highly on therapists for supervision, and existing
computer-assisted systems lack consideration for enabling self-monitoring,
making at-home physical rehabilitation difficult. In this paper, we
investigated design recommendations that would enable self-monitored
rehabilitation through clinical observations and focus group interviews with
doctors and therapists. With this knowledge, we further explored Virtual
Reality(VR)-based visual presentation and supplemental haptic motion guidance
features in our implementation VReHab, a self-monitored and multimodal physical
rehabilitation system with VR and vibrotactile and pneumatic feedback in a TKA
rehabilitation context. We found that the third point of view real-time
reconstructed motion on a virtual avatar overlaid with the target pose
effectively provides motion awareness and guidance while haptic feedback helps
enhance users' motion accuracy and stability. Finally, we implemented
\systemname to facilitate self-monitored post-operative exercises and validated
its effectiveness through a clinical study with 10 patients