A Bibliometric Analysis of Application of VR Technologies in Stroke Rehabilitation from 2001 to 2021 in China.

Abstract

This study aims to explore the current situation, hot research topics and emerging trends of application of VR technologies in stroke rehabilitation in China in the past 20 years, and to provide a reference for researchers to grasp the research dynamics in this field comprehensively. We analyzed a total of 251 references that were collected from China Knowledge Network (CNKI) from 2001 to 2021.Visual analysis of authors, research institutions, and keywords was carried out with the software CiteSpace. We found that the annual number of articles published in this field is increasing, Fu Kuijie and Liu Yunfang are the most fruitful authors, and Liang Ming, Xiong Wei, and others formed the largest author cooperation community. The hot keywords were "stroke", "virtual reality", "rehabilitation therapy", "upper limb function", "walking function", etc., which formed 11 clusters. This bibliometric study reflects the research on the application of virtual reality technologies to stroke patients' rehabilitation is in the beginning development stage and maintains an incremental trend, and the cooperation among authors has been carried out to a certain extent, but the cooperation between institutions is not strong enough, and the content of the research is relatively concentrated. In the future, cooperation between authors and institutions should be strengthened, and the depth and breadth of research should be deepened based on clustering results.