Baheux Kenji, Yoshizawa Makoto, Tanaka Akira, Seki Kazunori, Handa Yasunobu
Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Aoba 6-6-05, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8579, Japan.
Technol Health Care. 2005;13(4):245-60.
Victims of a stroke or an accident with damage on the parietal lobe can suffer from hemispatial neglect. This disorder is characterized by misperception of the space contralateral to the damaged area. Paper and pencil tests, such as line bisection tests, are used to diagnose hemispatial neglect. Unfortunately, they fail to quantify the degree of the neglect. Moreover, the neglect has different manifestations in each sensorial space and frame of references. In order to diagnose disorders of spatial recognition and analyze the neglected area in visual and somatic spaces, we developed a 3D-haptic virtual reality system coupled with an eye-tracking device. The haptic interface was used to interact with virtual objects. The virtual world can use the eye-gaze information to let patients overcome the neglect. We tested the system at a rehabilitation center and observed different approaches between normal subjects and hemiplegics patients. The first group was getting close to the target and then slowed down to grab it, whereas the later group proceeded by trial and error. The feature of trajectories of the hand in the 3D space could be used to determine the degree of the motion handicap. However, more specific virtual worlds are needed for efficiently extracting the feature of the patients.
中风或事故导致顶叶受损的患者可能会出现半侧空间忽视。这种病症的特点是对受损区域对侧的空间存在感知错误。诸如直线二等分测试等纸笔测试被用于诊断半侧空间忽视。不幸的是，它们无法量化忽视的程度。此外，忽视在每个感觉空间和参照系中都有不同表现。为了诊断空间识别障碍并分析视觉和躯体空间中的被忽视区域，我们开发了一种结合眼动追踪设备的3D触觉虚拟现实系统。触觉界面用于与虚拟物体进行交互。虚拟世界可以利用眼动注视信息让患者克服忽视。我们在一家康复中心对该系统进行了测试，并观察到正常受试者和偏瘫患者之间的不同方法。第一组是靠近目标然后放慢速度去抓取，而后者则是通过试错来进行。手部在3D空间中的轨迹特征可用于确定运动障碍的程度。然而，需要更特定的虚拟世界来有效提取患者的特征。
