Upper limb virtual rehabilitation for traumatic brain injury: Initial evaluation of the elements system

Abstract

Primary objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a tabletop virtual-reality (VR) based upper-limb rehabilitation system (called Elements) for promoting movement skill in patients with TBI.

Research design: An ABA case study design with multiple baselines was employed. Baseline performance in this design is contrasted against the results during the treatment phase.

Research methods: Three patients with TBI participated in 12 1-hour sessions of VR-based training. The VR system consisted of a 42-inch tabletop LCD, camera tracking system and tangible user interface. The system requires participants to move an object to cued locations while receiving augmented movement feedback to reinforce speed, trajectory and placement. Upper limb performance was assessed using these three system-measured variables and standardized tests. Trends in the time-sequence plots for each patient were assessed by sight inspection of smoothed data and then by statistical analyses.

Results: Participants demonstrated improvements on movement accuracy, efficiency and bimanual dexterity and mixed improvement on speed and other measures of movement skill.

Conclusion: Taken together, the findings demonstrate that the Elements system shows promise in facilitating motor learning in these TBI patients. Larger scale trials are now deemed a viable step in further validating the system.

• Traumatic brain injury
• virtual reality
• rehabilitation
• motor learning
• motor control
• augmented feedback

Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Grant LP0562622, and Synapse Grant awarded by the Australia Council for the Arts. We wish to acknowledge the contributions of other members of the broader Elements project; Ross Eldridge and Dr Heiko Rudolph from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, RMIT University, and Mark Guglielmetti, an artist and Lecturer with the School of Art and Design, Monash University.

Declaration of Interest: The authors have no conflict of interest with respect to the development and validation of the Elements system.