| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 物理治療學系暨研究所 === 95 === PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the capacity of virtual-reality (VR) technology-assisted rehabilitation system to improve powered wheelchair steering skills for spinal cord injury (SCI) clients.
SUBJECTS: 17 male SCI participants involved in this study. They are all non-experienced powered wheelchair users(lesion level: C5-T4) and randomly divided into 3 groups. The VR with sound group was 6 subjects (mean age: 41.00±13.68 years, time since injury:15.60±8.68 months). The VR without sound group was 6 subjects (mean age: 40.80±15.55 years, time since injury: 16.00±6.36months). The control group was 5 subjects (mean age:36.67±11.50 years, time since injury: 11.67±3.51months).
Method: Three groups all received the same VR pre-training test. The VR with and without sound groups all accepted 10 times VR training lesions. The control group didn’t accept any VR-related training. Then three groups also all received the same VR post-training test and the VR with and without sound groups received real road driving test. The measure variables included: task time, error times, distance, the questionnaires of enjoyment and cybersickness.
ANALYSIS: The statistical analyses were processed by software package SPSS. Descriptive statistical, Wilcoxon signed rank test, Kruskal-Wallis test, Mann-Whitney U test, Pearson product moment correlation were processed. Level of statistical was set at 0.05
RESULTS: The VR with and without sound groups all improved their steering skills after 10 times training. Between groups, in the variables of post-training test and percentage of improvement, VR with sound group was the best and VR without sound group was better than the control group. The two VR groups could transfer their steering skills from VR to real road. All subjects showed positive responses for this system and almost didn’t have cybersickness symptoms.
CONCLUSIONS: This study use a developed VR technology-assisted rehabilitation system, and evaluate its capacity to improve powered wheelchair steering skill for SCI clients. After VR training, subjects’ driving skills improve and this project makes the VR powered steering training be part of rehabilitation routine and transferring the training effect from VR to real world in SCI patients.
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