Development of Mirror Therapy Using Non-Immersive Virtual Reality

Abstract

Mirror  therapy  (MT)  is  a  method  to  train  upper  limb  after  Stroke  or  Parkinson 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 or Parkinson.  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.