A Universe Inside the MRI Scanner: An In-Bore Virtual Reality Game for Children to Reduce Anxiety and Stress

Abstract

The feeling of lying in the restricted bore of an MRI scanner, surrounded by loud noises and not allowed to move, is a psychological burden for patients. Children especially have problems to lie still during the examination and sometimes exhibit intense fear reactions. Therefore, children are frequently sedated before the examination. We introduce the concept and implementation of a virtual reality (VR) game as a medication-free alternative for children, aiming to reduce anxiety, stress, and boredom during MRI examinations. Playing or just watching an animated space story in VR provides distraction and relaxation to the patients. We pursued a child-centered, participatory design process and derived design requirements from the results of two workshops with children in a hospital school (N = 15) and a primary school (N = 14), as well as a focus group test with a prototype. We propose VR games as a solution to enhance the well-being of children during medical interventions and show a way to approach a user-centered and targeted game design.