Introduction: External cueing can improve gait in people with Parkinson's disease (PD), but there is a need for wearable, personalized and flexible cueing techniques that can exploit the power of action-relevant visual cues. Augmented Reality (AR) involving headsets or glasses represents a promising technology in those regards. This study examines the gait-modifying effects of real-world and AR cueing in people with PD.
Methods: 21 people with PD performed walking tasks augmented with either real-world or AR cues, imposing changes in gait speed, step length, crossing step length, and step height. Two different AR headsets, differing in AR field of view (AR-FOV) size, were used to evaluate potential AR-FOV-size effects on the gait-modifying effects of AR cues as well as on the head orientation required for interacting with them.
Results: Participants modified their gait speed, step length, and crossing step length significantly to changes in both real-world and AR cues, with step lengths also being statistically equivalent to those imposed. Due to technical issues, step-height modulation could not be analyzed. AR-FOV size had no significant effect on gait modifications, although small differences in head orientation were observed when interacting with nearby objects between AR headsets.
Conclusion: People with PD can modify their gait to AR cues as effectively as to real-world cues with state-of-the-art AR headsets, for which AR-FOV size is no longer a limiting factor. Future studies are warranted to explore the merit of a library of cue modalities and individually-tailored AR cueing for facilitating gait in real-world environments.
Keywords: Augmented Reality; HoloLens 2; Magic Leap 2; Mixed Reality; Parkinson’s disease; gait parameters; visual cueing.
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