Application of Augmented Reality in Stroke Rehabilitation

Sounds like a great proposal.
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~develop/GooglePhDNominations2014/Khademi_Maryam/Maryam%20Khademi%20-%20Google%20Proposal.pdf

Executive Summary

Stroke remains a major cause of human disability. Stroke rehabilitation is a challenging process. Movement impairments after stroke typically require intensive treatments, and hands-on physical and occupational therapy for

several weeks after the initial injury. An important goal for Rehabilitation Engineering is to develop technologies that allow individuals with stroke to practice intensive movement training without the expense of an always

present therapist. We propose to develop and assess a set of low-

cost, Spatial Augmented Reality games that allow individuals

with stroke to practice controlled hand and arm movement exercises at home or at clinic with minimal interventions of a therapist. With Augmented Reality, the patients can interact with augmented real-world objects while being precisely monitored. This will allow us to design games that better reflect the physical actions that support Activities of Daily Living. We posit that the natural cognitive model of Augmented Reality and its integration with ordinary objects will have a more positive impact on the patients’ recovery than computer-assisted technologies that are centered on computer peripherals. This proposal aims to find out to what extent this hypothesis holds.

1.

Specific Aims of the Research Program

We propose to develop and evaluate a low-cost, Spatial Augmented Reality (spAR) game platform that allows individuals with stroke to practice functionally-rich hand and arm movement exercises at home, in hospital, or at clinic with minimal intervention by a therapist.

Augmented Reality technology has great potential to build upon traditional rehabilitation techniques and thereby overcome some of the limitations associated with current forms of stroke rehabilitation. A chief example is the use of a high ecology environment that is maximally relevant to functional goals. Performing tasks in an Augmented Reality

environment can be expected to generalize to real life settings to a greater extent than with other approaches, including other computer-based methods.  As an extension of this, object affordance can be directly adjusted in therapy based on Augmented Reality, with real objects incorporated into tasks as desired. This approach can also provide a means for a therapist or patient to control the therapy environment with precision, for example, by minimizing (or increasing) extraneous distractions and consequences associated with real life stroke therapy environments, or by modulating the cognitive demands of therapy, for example, by changing how many extraneous objects are included in various therapy trials.

The specific aims are to address the following hypotheses:

1) Patients receiving treatment through spAR games will show greater gains in body function (Fugl-Meyer scale,FM) than patients receiving traditional therapy, with no difference in safety measures.

2) Patients receiving treatment through spAR games will achieve better gains in activities limitation(Action Research Arm Test, ARAT; and Barthel Index) than patients receiving traditional therapy.

3) Patients receiving treatment through spAR games will achieve better gains in quality of life (Stroke Impact Scale, a self-report measure) than patients receiving traditional therapy.

4) spAR games are more engaging and will provide greater gains in the trained task as compared to Virtual Reality(niVR) games

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