A Virtual Reality Based Platform to Balance Disorders Diagnosis and Vestibular Rehabilitation

Abstract

This paper presents a virtual reality platform for balance disorders diagnosis and vestibular rehabilitation, portable and of low cost, composed of modules for patient health assessment and therapy exercises, with different types of user experience and immersion. Three categories of stimuli have been modeled and implemented: (1) Foveal, in which all the virtual environment targets, one by one, are areas of interest of the patient's point of view; (2) Retinal, in which the entire user's visual field is stimulated, without a particular target; and (3) Visuo-vestibular Integration, where several stimuli are available to the patient during the navigation (followed by head movements) and exploratory view through the virtual environments wearing HMD glasses, while standing up on a USB balance scale which was built with a custom hardware solution. Moreover, functional and usability testing with specialists were done to validate in pilot studies the platform effectiveness in balance disorders diagnosis and therapies for vestibular rehabilitation.