The Feasibility of Augmented Reality as Support Tool for Motor Rehabilitation

Isidro Butaslac


The main goal of this work is to facilitate the application of Augmented Reality (AR) in the rehabilitative clinical setting with the purpose of supporting the therapist’s observations by providing real-time augmentations. The feasibility of AR as a support tool for the therapists is explored by developing prototypes that would meet the demand of the therapists during their rehabilitation and training. Over the course of this work, we have developed two prototypes, one for chair training and another one for walking training. We have presented the prototypes we developed through demonstrations in two hospitals in Japan. We also explore the combinations of AR technologies and concepts that would best serve our purposes in the rehabilitation and training setting. We have done this by surveying what kind of data are needed to supplement the clinical eye of the therapists. We also explore the different possibilities of AR visualizations on handling different kinds of data and investigate which one would enable them to understand better the condition of the patient. Finally, we also discuss which device would allow the best outcome for these data visualizations. During the demonstrations we have gathered feedback from the therapists regarding what they think of the AR visualizations, and the system as a whole. Overall, we have collected positive feedback from the therapists that have participated in our demonstrations, indicating the possibility of this work to be extended to actual clinical use.