Mirror thrapy system based virtual reality for chronic pain in home use

Mirror therapy with mirror box is one of famous therapy for treating a phantom pain and chronic pain. Recovery of motor function of the patient is important factor for analgesic efficiency in the therapy. Virtual reality (VR) technology using computer graphics can be used in rehabilitation for improving motor function after stroke or pain control. Mirror therapy with VR called Virtual Reality based Mirror Visual Feedback (VR-MVF) system is used for a patient with chronic pain in a hospital. In order to give the opportunity to treat the pain in the patient´s home under the guidance of a medical doctor, this study developed a VR-MVF system using Kinect for body motion measurement. The developed system measures the motion of upper limb by Kinect and initiates the grasping motion of the artificial hand with affected side in a VR environment by a mouse click of the hand of intact side. The applicability of the developed system is confirmed by several experiments to evaluate the sensations and motor cognition in using VR-MVF by ten participants.