Applying Serious Games based on Augmented Reality to the Balance Rehabilitation System for Parkinson's Disease Patients

  • 王 怡雯

Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) causes tremors rigidity abnormal gait and postural instability and these symptoms lead to falls and diminish patients’ quality of life Continuous rehabilitation for patients with PD may be more effective in the long term than either pharmacotherapy or surgical treatment Nevertheless the patient's motivation is reduced due to the difficulty of frequent visits to the rehabilitation center This research applies augmented reality (AR) to develop a rehabilitation serious game to achieve the goal of providing patients with PD with a more convenient and effective rehabilitation method which can increase the patient’s step length to reduce the situation of festinating gait and stabilizing the posture to improve the sense of balance In the 4-week experiment of this research this research invited 10 patients diagnosed with Hoehn and Yahr stages I–III They were divided into an experiment group and a control group The analyzed parameters include Berg Balance Scale Activities-Specific Balance Confidence Scale the center of gravity (COG) displacement step length and step height Through the results to observe the difference of the two groups before and after the experiment The experiment group has two items with significant differences Respectively the COG displacement is compared from the pre-test (M = 1 63 SD = 1 1) with the post-test (M = 1 07 SD = 0 89) P = 0 031 and the step length is compared from the pre-test (M = 43 5 SD 5 45) with the post-test (M = 48 91 SD = 6 81) P = 0 031 while the control group showed no significant difference There is a significant difference between the experiment group (M = -0 57 SD = 0 46) and the control group (M = 0 58 SD = 0 83) in the training effectiveness of the COG displacement at P = 0 004 Overall this rehabilitation serious game has similar training effects and be even more effective than existing rehabilitation methods According to the results of the System Usability Scale and semi-structured interviews the usability is well-rewarded This rehabilitation game also improves the inconvenience of existing rehabilitation methods This research designed an AR rehabilitation serious game which promotes the step length and improves sense of balance and the experimental results can be used as a reference for future related research
Date of Award2021
Original languageEnglish
SupervisorChien-Hsu Chen (Supervisor)

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