Serious Game for Post-stroke Upper Limb Rehabilitation

Stroke is a considerable cause of disability worldwide. A common motor recovery goal in physical therapy is to promote and enhance symmetry in motor patterns involved in daily functional tasks, aiming to prevent learned nonuse of the paretic side. The aim of this work is the development of a serious game for upper limbs training in stroke persons. This assistive technology is composed of a Kinect v2 combined with sEMG. We propose an integrated approach that includes three key factors: (a) fully immersive virtual environment with virtual body representation; (b) interaction with virtual objects; and (c) a biofeedback of arm movements of the patient through sEMG. The results show that the virtual reality environment here proposed is able to promote muscle activation in elbow flexion-extension movements, with average hit rate of 94.51 % (right arm), 93.1 % (left arm) and 85.67 % (both arms).