Haptic virtual rehabilitation exercises for poststroke diagnosis

Nowadays, stroke is one of the most frequent causes of severe adult disability in the world. Virtual reality and haptic technologies have emerged as promising assistive tools for effective diagnosis and rehabilitation intervention. The objective of this paper is to develop and test a set of five virtual exercises on top of a framework, which is designed for the diagnosis and rehabilitation of patients with hand impairments. We have implemented task-oriented exercises based on well-established and common exercises, namely the Jebsen Test of Hand Function and the Box and Block Test. These include moving a cup, arranging blocks, navigating a maze, training with a dumbbell, and grasping a rubber ball. Furthermore, key performance measures (metrics) are proposed for each exercise to quantitatively evaluate and judge the performance of stroke patients. Our evaluation of these exercises shows promising potential to define "golden" reference metrics for healthy subjects, against which the performance of a patient is compared. This will facilitate the ability of occupational therapists to assess the patient's progress.