A serious game for virtual rehabilitation: evaluation with patients and physiotherapists

Abstract

Games can make training procedures more engaging for patients. Considering the complexity of the process for upper limb function rehabilitation, this paper presents the development and an initial evaluation of the AGaR – a serious game with virtual reality and natural interaction, both to aid patients to execute repetitive exercises and to aid physiotherapists to follow the rehabilitation process. Additionally, we obtain and analyze data about patients’ engagement as a differential in relation to others games developed for similar goals. In this game, the patient has to associate two different images with complementary meanings, using a movement sensor to drag the image to the target. We conducted an experiment with physiotherapists in order to evaluate the feasibility of applying the game in real therapies. We also conducted an initial experiment with patients. The results show that physiotherapists  believe that the game is effective and might be used during therapies. From the experiments with patientss, we obtained that the number of wrong associations made by them varies according to patient, with no standard found. The engagement tends to increase during use of the game, throughout the rounds.