Development of a virtual reality environment for somatosensory and perceptual stimulation in the balance assessment of children

In this study, we developed a balance assessment system in which the visual stimulus was generated by a virtual reality (VR) technique and somatosensation was obtained from a movable platform. By standing on the movable platform, the center of pressure (COP) was measured to express the subject's postural control in response to varied visual stimuli. From the COP data, a singular value decomposition technique was used to derive the sway area and direction, represented in a polar form. Our system demonstrated the feasibility of using a VR environment in postural control trials and provided more realistic somatosensory and visual inputs.