Immersive Virtual Reality for Visuo-motor Integration Skill Assessment

Summary

A significant deficit affecting nearly half of children with hemiplegia is visual-motor integration, or eye-hand coordination. Children have difficulties integrating visual and motor information to effectively plan and execute movements. Visual-motor impairments are detrimental because they affect accuracy of reaching and grasping, which are movements involved in feeding, writing, and sports participation, among many other daily life activities. Although paper-and-pencil and touchscreen computer assessments exist, these fail to evaluate impairments under realistic, 3D conditions. This assessment barrier leads to significant gaps in knowledge the influence of these impairments on children's performance of functional activities.

We will use immersive virtual reality (VR) delivered using a head-mounted display (HMD) to address this gap. Because it is fully visually immersive, VR makes interactions similar to real world performance. These features enable HMD-VR to offer more natural assessment conditions. HMD-VR may help us gain important new knowledge about functional movement deficits in children with hemiplegia.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate low-cost HMD-VR as a realistic assessment tool for visual-motor integration deficits in children with hemiplegia. The long-term goals of our research program are to: 1) Inform clinical decision-making practices by providing families and clinicians with precise, accurate information about children's abilities; and 2) Generate new knowledge about visual-motor integration impairments to enhance the effectiveness of both virtual and conventional rehabilitation interventions. We will recruit 40 children with hemiplegia aged 7-16 years at GMFCS Levels I-III and Manual Ability Classification System levels I-II for testing sessions of seated paper-and-pencil, touchscreen computer and HMD-VR visual-motor integration tasks at 3 clinical sites We will measure feasibility using counts of enrollment, side-effects and protocol completion. Visual-motor integration is quantified in the paper-and-pencil task via standardized score and in touchscreen and HMD-VR tasks using equivalent temporal and spatial eye and hand metrics. This pilot study will generate descriptive estimates of differences in visual-motor performance under conditions of differing 3D realism. This work is the first step towards the ultimate goal of a valid assessment method informing new VR-based treatment options for children with hemiplegia.

Conditions

• Cerebral Palsy
• Hemiplegia

Interventions

DEVICE

Immersive virtual reality visuo-motor skill assessment

Visuo-motor skill assessment in an immersive 3D virtual environment using a head-mounted display.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• MaineHealth

  collaborator OTHER

• Massachusetts General Hospital

  collaborator OTHER

• Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital

  collaborator OTHER

• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

  collaborator NIH

• Northeastern University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Danielle Levac, PhD · Northeastern University

Study Design

Allocation

NON_RANDOMIZED

Purpose

DEVICE_FEASIBILITY

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

7 Years

Max Age

16 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-05-01

Primary Completion

2021-12-30

Completion

2021-12-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations