Design of Mirror Therapy Technique to Rehabilitate Upper Limb After Stroke Using Non-Immersive Virtual Reality

Abstract

Mirror therapy (MT) is a method to train upper limb after Stroke incident. The combination of MT with virtual reality (VR) has given more immersion experience into the illusion, while MT needs participant concentration to truly sensate the illusion as real. The purpose of this research is to design and develop first prototype of VR-MT as physical therapy equipment for enhancing motor performance in upper limb after Stroke. Upper limb motion in VR-MT is captured by Microsoft Kinect. We involve five healthy participants as VR-MT tester to execute a therapy task by controlling virtual limb to hit apples or avoid bombs in virtual environment (VE) for 10 minutes. After the treatment of therapy task, participants do simple assessment by answering a questionnaire. The result of statistical analysis of the questionnaire can be concluded that four elements including controllability, natural operation, sense of delay.and spatial difference are important key to control the movement of virtual limb correctly in VR-MT.