Gaggioli Andrea, Amoresano Amedeo, Gruppioni Emanuele, Verni Gennaro, Riva Giuseppe
ATN-P Lab, Istituto Auxologico Italiano, Milan, Italy.
Stud Health Technol Inform. 2010;154:220-2.
At least 90% of individuals of limb amputees experience phantom limb pain (PLP). Recent clinical research suggests that providing patients with the mirror image representation of the amputated limb may alleviate PLP. However, mirror therapy cannot be used with bilateral amputees, as visual feedback is dependent on the movement of the intact limb. To overcome this limitation, we designed a novel myoelectric-controlled virtual reality (VR) system for the treatment of phantom limb pain in trans-radial upper extremity amputees. The proposed system allows the patient to directly control the virtual limb by recognizing stump muscle patterns recorded with EMG sensors. The hypothesis behind this strategy is that the VR image of the amputated limb induces better limb imagery than the reflected image of their intact limb and, therefore, is more effective in reducing PLP. A research protocol to test this hypothesis is described.
至少90%的肢体截肢者会经历幻肢痛（PLP）。最近的临床研究表明，为患者提供截肢肢体的镜像呈现可能会缓解幻肢痛。然而，镜像疗法不能用于双侧截肢者，因为视觉反馈依赖于健全肢体的运动。为了克服这一限制，我们设计了一种新型的肌电控制虚拟现实（VR）系统，用于治疗经桡骨上肢截肢者的幻肢痛。所提出的系统允许患者通过识别用肌电图传感器记录的残肢肌肉模式来直接控制虚拟肢体。这一策略背后的假设是，截肢肢体的VR图像比其健全肢体的反射图像能诱导出更好的肢体意象，因此在减轻幻肢痛方面更有效。本文描述了一个测试这一假设的研究方案。
