Virtual Reality Rehabilitation for Shoulder Pathologies

Overview

Most rehabilitation protocols require patients to train the affected limbs with high regularity, following repetitive cycles of exercises, in order to recover mobility and strength. Nonetheless, the repetitive nature of these exercises can demotivate patients leading to less intense and committed training, if not ending with a lack of compliance toward the prescribed exercises, ultimately leading to a suboptimal recovery. For this reason, several research groups are investigating solutions to help patients in this process, using robotic support or protocols assisted by virtual reality (VR). Most of these studies have shown benefits, notably in the field of post-stroke rehabilitation, however numerous types of physical therapies have not been investigated yet. Therefore, the main goal of this study will be to explore if the combination of modern motion-tracking and VR can provide significant functional outcomes for the treatment of the most common upper limb pathologies. The investigators created a set of exergames designed to lead the patients through a gamified version of part of physiotherapy (PT). This modified therapy is expected to offer several benefits to the treatment with respect to a purely conventional therapy: (i) improved patient's motivation and commitment to the exercises; (ii) constant evaluation of the patient's performance, thanks to the use of motion tracking; (iii) session-by-session tuning of exercises difficulty; (iv) clear progress traceability; (v) real-time alerts in case of problematic or compensatory movements; (vi) measurement and evaluation of new metrics of movements quality that were not possible in conventional therapy setups. To evaluate the feasibility of this project, the investigators would like to test the VR system on a short series of patients during four sessions.