DidRen VR: An Evolutive Virtual Reality Application Satisfying Fitt's Law to Assess and Train Cervical Mobility

Abstract

Clinical tests are of paramount importance for clinical practice in physiotherapy to assess patients' functional abilities, evaluate their progress, or even train them. They mostly consist in fixed standardized motor tasks. However, assessing one patient's evolution along time may demand modular tests in which the difficulty of a given task can be tuned to offer a relevant challenge to patients at any moment of their rehabilitation. The use of virtual reality (VR) in this context allows the development of clinical tests and exercises in a 3D virtual environment. Through programming, the environment can be made modular in much simpler way than with real clinical tests.  In this paper, we introduce the DidRen VR test, a VR version of the DidRen laser test which aims to assess the mobility of the cervical spine using a targeting system triggered by a laser beam moved by rotating the neck. The DidRen VR test is designed to run on low-cost VR headsets, affordable for clinicians. Since the Fitts' law is satisfied with the DidRen VR test among a population of 50 participants it can be therefore be seen as a relevant alternative to the real-world DidRen laser test for cervical mobility assessment.