Have your doctor find out how long before this becomes available to bring back hand function. Its only 1.5 years old so your doctor better know about this.
videos at link.
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=201800
Stroke patients can now rev up recovery as a guest at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party with the March Hare as their therapist.
Playing
3-D games in a fantasy virtual reality environment such as Alice in
Wonderland is a new avenue for rehabilitation and it sure beats
monotonous sessions of moving objects from one box to another to repair
motor skills.
“Virtual reality therapy is so popular right now
because patients get bored,” said artist Daria Tsoupikova, an associate
professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Art and
Design.
With virtual reality, patients get excited. “They can
see something colorful, they can see some kind of environment, other
characters, and have a story behind the therapy,” she said.
Advances
in stroke therapy are rapidly evolving with virtual reality techniques.
Tsoupikova, along with Derek Kamper, the principal investigator, Dr.
Nikolay Stoykov, a biomedical engineer, Randy Vick, an art therapist, Yu
Li, an art research assistant and a group of occupational therapists
and engineers from the Hand Rehabilitation Laboratory at the
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, collaborated to develop a virtual
reality environment to assist stroke patients with hand rehabilitation.
RIC
began with a project utilizing a specially calibrated glove that
patients wear in conjunction with a virtual reality environment. In this
virtual world, the patient is guided through a series of therapeutic
hand movements.
Now, Tsoupikova is working with computer
scientists at the UIC’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory and RIC
physicians to further develop the glove technology.
Tsoupikova
recently received a Fulbright Scholarship and spent four months at the
Arts et Métiers Paris Tech in France where she worked testing software
for an online home therapy system.
Tsoupikova’s virtual world
has the Alice in Wonderland theme. The patient is a guest at the Mad
Hatter's Tea Party and the host of the party, the March Hare, is the
patient’s therapist.
The March Hare leads the patient through a
variety of exercises interacting with animated objects in the virtual
tea party scene. Patients use grasp-and-release techniques and finger
movements.
The rehabilitation program Tsoupikova created is
simple. The user logs in online with a user ID and password, sees
themselves as a guest at the tea party, and their therapist as the March
Hare. The therapist then shows the patient a series of exercises and
asks them to repeat the movements.
“It is like a multi-user 3-D
game with your goal being rehabilitation,” said Tsoupikova. “The
therapist will be able to see if the patient is doing the movement
correctly or incorrectly.”
Home systems would benefit patients who often have limited mobility after a stroke.
“The
problem is,” Tsoupikova said, “most stroke patients not only have an
impaired hand, but they have other problems too.” Many of them are in
wheelchairs, and are unable to use public transportation to get to their
therapy sessions.
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