A diagnostic room for lower limb amputee based on virtual reality and an intelligent space

Abstract

This article proposes a virtual reality (VR) system for diagnosing and rehabilitating lower limb amputees. A virtual environment and an intelligent space are the basis of the proposed solution. The target audiences are physiotherapists and doctors, and the aim is to provide a VR-based system to allow visualization and analysis of gait parameters and conformity. The multi-camera system from the intelligent space acquires images from patients during gait. This way, it is possible to generate tridimensional information for the VR-based system. Among the provided functionalities, the user can explore the virtual environment and manage several features, such as gait reproduction and parameters displayed, using a head-mounted display and hand controllers. Besides, the system presents an automatic classifier that can assist physiotherapists and doctors in assessing abnormalities from conventional human gait. We evaluate the system through two quantitative experiments. The first one addresses the performance evaluation of the automatic classifier. The second analysis is through a Likert scale questionnaire submitted to a group of physiotherapists. In this case, the specialists evaluate the existing features of the proposed framework. The results from the questionnaire showed that the virtual environment is suitable for helping track patients' rehabilitation. Also, the neural network-based classifier results are promising, averaging higher than 91% for all evaluation metrics. Finally, a comparison with related works in the literature highlights the contributions of the proposed solution to the field.

Keywords: Artificial neural network; Intelligent space; Rehabilitation; Virtual reality.