Assessment and Treat Neglect Patients With a VR Application

Summary

The objective of this project is to investigate the effectiveness of neglect training in our self-developed VR application "SpatialSense". The investigators aim to reach the following goals:

i. Compare conventional neglect therapy for neglect training with SpatialSense to evaluate the impacts on neglect recovery to see whether the VR therapy improves the clinical outcomes, such as balance recovery, perception of verticality, quality of life, independence in daily activities, and cognitive impairment, after rehabilitation training.

ii. Analyze and compare the search strategies employed by stroke patients with VSN and those without VSN during the execution of the search task with SpatialSense to summarize typical visual scanning strategies for facilitation, rehabilitation training, and improving the transfer effect in daily activities.

The experimental group will receive both conventional OT and PT treatment, but 3 days a week, half an hour of conventional treatment will be replaced by treatment with SpatialSense software. The control group will receive their regular dose-matched conventional OT and PT sessions without interference. The experimental group will receive SpatialSense training 3 times a week for a consecutive 4 weeks (12 sessions in total of 30 minutes).

Conditions

• Neglect, Hemispatial
• Stroke
• Virtual Reality Therapy

Interventions

DEVICE

Virtual reality training

This training is built for the HMD Pico 4 Enterprise, which has six degrees of freedom, a 4k RGB display, a 101-degree field of view, and built-in eye-tracking hardware and software. The virtual environment is a 3-dimensional immersive environment in which the participant will be placed in three different virtual scenes: a picnic table, a kitchen, and a playground. This allows for the placement of stimuli in three different regions: near peripersonal (reaching) space, far peripersonal space, and extrapersonal (far) space. The goal of the game is to search for items that appear in front of the view, as accurately and quickly as possible.

BEHAVIORAL

physiotherapy and occupational therapy

The conventional treatment consists of a problem-solving approach mainly based on the neurodevelopmental treatment approach. For VSN, the conventional treatment mainly consists of a mix of prism adaptation, visual scanning, and compensatory strategies based on the individual needs of the patient.

DEVICE

Assessment

During assessments with SpatialSense, participants will sit in a wheelchair or on a straight-back chair. The trunk will be restricted to the chair. Finally, the data will be exported from SpatialSense and analyzed by investigators to define different search strategies while performing scanning tasks.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Universiteit Antwerpen

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Wim Saeys · +32 496804347

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2025-06-01

Primary Completion

2027-05-01

Completion

2027-07-01

Countries

• Belgium

Study Locations