A step towards developing a virtual reality based rehabilitation system for individuals with post-stroke forearm movement disorders

Stroke is a leading cause of adult death and disability, often followed by muscle weakness, loss of control and coordination in limbs and movement disorders. Rehabilitation is critically important to restore function in damaged body parts and help the stroke-surviving individuals regain ability to independently perform everyday activities. Continuing post-stroke rehabilitative therapy at the hospital is difficult due to economic pressure and limited resources of the health care system. Also, taking help of an always-present therapist is too expensive for many patients. A relatively new approach towards stroke rehabilitation is developing technology-assisted rehabilitative system. In this study we developed a Virtual Reality based system to enhance the endurance and coordination skill of stroke patients with forearm movement disorder. This system can be used by the patient at home as per his convenience, with minimal dependency on a physiotherapist or a caregiver. Our paper describes the system design of this proof-of-concept application. The preliminary results of testing and feasibility studies suggest that the endurance and coordination skill of the participants (two able-bodied and one stroke-surviving person) improved with repeated attempts. This indicates that our system is a definite step towards becoming a simple, technology-assisted solution for rehabilitation of upper-limb movement disorder. © 2013 IEEE.