Using interactive immersive VR/AR for the therapy of phantom limb pain

Abstract

This paper addresses the treatment of phantom limb pain through visual cortical stimulation with AR- and VR-technologies. Phantom limb pain is a painful sensation in a missing body part which appears after amputations. Patients using a myoelectric prosthesis suffer less from it. The effect can also be reduced by a so-called mirror-training. To study the possibilities and effects of virtual mirror-training two systems were developed: A new interactive home training system on the basis of Immersive Augmented Reality for the therapy of phantom limb pain, as well as a Virtual Reality system for virtual mirror-training while measuring cortical activation by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These systems will soon be used in a comparative study.