Acceptance and suitability of a novel virtual system in chronic acquired brain injury patients

Abstract

Acquired Brain Injury is one of the leading causes of death in the world. The main alterations are postural control, balance, and gait disorders, that limit activities of daily living. Therapies in traditional gross/fine rehabilitation of upper limbs are: constraint-induced movement therapy, hand splints, or fine motor coordination. Groundbreaking virtual environments have been tested in patients with neurological disorders with encouraging outcomes. However these systems have not been tested with specific and customizable questionnaires that focus on usability, dizziness, disorientation, or realism. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to validate the suitability evaluation questionnaire (SEQ) with our system, the Virtual Rehabilitation Sphero (VRSphero). To do this, we tested previously the SEQ questionnaire with subjects that did not have any cognitive impairment. Since the results show that these subjects did not have problems related to nausea, disorientation or dizziness, we plan to test our tool with chronic ABI patients.