Feasibility and reliability of a virtual reality oculus platform to measure sensory integration for postural control in young adults

ABSTRACT

Background: Using Unity for the Oculus Development-Kit 2, we have developed an affordable, portable virtual reality platform that targets the visuomotor domain, a missing link in current clinical assessments of postural control. Here, we describe the design and technical development as well as report its feasibility with regards to cybersickness and test-retest reliability in healthy young adults. Method: Our virtual reality paradigm includes two functional scenes (‘City’ and ‘Park’) and four moving dots scenes. Twenty-one healthy young adults were tested twice, one to two weeks apart. They completed a simulator sickness questionnaire several times per session. Their postural sway response was recorded from a forceplate underneath their feet while standing on the floor, stability trainers, or a Both Sides Up (BOSU) ball. Sample entropy, postural displacement, velocity, and excursion were calculated and compared between sessions given the visual and surface conditions. Results: Participants reported slight-to-moderate transient side effects. Intra-Class Correlation values mostly ranged from 0.5 to 0.7 for displacement and velocity, were above 0.5 (stability trainer conditions) and above 0.4 (floor mediolateral conditions) for sample entropy, and minimal for excursion. Conclusion: Our novel portable VR platform was found to be feasible and reliable in healthy young adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Balance
• rehabilitation
• visuomotor processing
• visual dependence
• oculus development-kit 2

Acknowledgements

The authors thank David Lobser and Wenbo Lan for the design of the scenes and technical support, to Shashank Garg for the analysis software and to Helene Darmanin and Dipti Wani for assistance with data collection. We are grateful to the anonymous referees for their many useful comments and suggestions.

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be access on the publisher’s website.