Affective States and Virtual Reality to Improve Gait Rehabilitation: A Preliminary Study

Rodríguez, Jafet; Del-Valle-Soto, Carolina; Javier Gonzalez-Sanchez

doi:10.3390/ijerph19159523

Affective States and Virtual Reality to Improve Gait Rehabilitation: A Preliminary Study

Journal

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

ISSN

1660-4601

Date Issued

2022

Author(s)

Javier Gonzalez-Sanchez

Type

Resource Types::text::journal::journal article

DOI

10.3390/ijerph19159523

URL

https://scripta.up.edu.mx/handle/20.500.12552/3931

Abstract

Over seven million people suffer from an impairment in Mexico; 64.1% are gait-related, and 36.2% are children aged 0 to 14 years. Furthermore, many suffer from neurological disorders, which limits their verbal skills to provide accurate feedback. Robot-assisted gait therapy has shown significant benefits, but the users must make an active effort to accomplish muscular memory, which usually is only around 30% of the time. Moreover, during therapy, the patients’ affective state is mostly unsatisfied, wide-awake, and powerless. This paper proposes a method for increasing the efficiency by combining affective data from an Emotiv Insight, an Oculus Go headset displaying an immersive interaction, and a feedback system. Our preliminary study had eight patients during therapy and eight students analyzing the footage using the self-assessment Manikin. It showed that it is possible to use an EEG headset and identify the affective state with a weighted average precision of 97.5%, recall of 87.9%, and F1-score of 92.3% in general. Furthermore, using a VR device could boost efficiency by 16% more. In conclusion, this method allows providing feedback to the therapist in real-time even if the patient is non-verbal and has a limited amount of facial and body expressions.