Virtualized Multimedia Environment for Shoulder Pain Rehabilitation

Abstract

Whether a person’s upper limbs healthy or not will seriously impact his/her daily life. For those who have healthy, normal function of upper limbs or those who suffered from impairment but in the process of rehabilitation training, it is very important to remain appropriate, reasonable and moderate exercise to keep upper limbs functioning normally or in gradual recovery. This study use Kinect somatosensory device with Unity software to develop 3D situational games such as: “Shoulder finger ladder” and “Single curved shoulder”. The collected data from this training process can be uploaded via the internet to the cloud or server for participants to do self-inspection or it can be a reference for medical staffs to assess training effectiveness for those with impairments and planning in rehabilitation courses. In order to have more effective ways, researchers have imported games and virtual reality training effect to help those participants to train their upper limbs in a relaxed and extricated environment. In Shoulder finger ladder and Single curved shoulder training activities, the results of 8 subjects with normal upper limbs function represented that the system has good stability and reproducibility. And it also showed that motion of dominant side is more flexible than the non-dominant side. Flexibility and responsiveness in the elders are slightly behind the young. Another six weeks of training were held for subjects with frozen shoulder combined with Shoulder finger ladder and Single curved shoulder games. It showed that on the 3rd week, the average performances were stable. The T-test average score from 1–2 week and 3–4 weeks/5–6 weeks showed significant difference (P < 0.05).