Giving Compass' Take:

• At Futurity, Alice Scott-Warwick enlightens readers to potential VR advancements in physical therapy for patients exercising at home. 

• How might this new technology impact the physical therapy industry? How could success in this field lead to VR technology in other medical areas? Are you prepared to offer financial support to VR advancements?

• Learn about the integration of VR in other institutions.

The advent of consumer virtual reality technology combined with 3D motion capture allows real movements to accurately translate onto an avatar that users can view in a virtual environment. Researchers are investigating whether this technology can provide guidance to physiotherapy patients via a virtual physiotherapist in the home to demonstrate the prescribed exercises.

To investigate whether people could accurately coordinate and follow the movements of an avatar in a virtual environment, researchers asked participants to step in time with an avatar viewed through a VR headset.

“We found that participants struggled to keep in time if only visual information was present. However, when we added realistic footstep sounds in addition to the visual information, the more realistic multisensory information allowed participants to accurately follow the avatar.”

“There is huge potential for consumer VR technologies to be used for both providing guidance to physiotherapy exercises, but also to make the exercises more interesting. This study has focused on the crucial question of how well people can follow a virtual guide,” says Mark Elliott, principal investigator of the project at WMG.

“Our work and digitally-enabled technological solution can underpin transformative health innovations to impact the field of physiotherapy, and have a direct benefit to patients’ rehabilitation,” says coauthor Theo Arvanitis, director of the Institute of Digital Healthcare.

Read the full article about how virtual reality could help with physical therapy by Alice Scott-Warwick at Futurity.