VIRTUAL REALITY ASSESSMENT AND REHABILITATION TOOLS FOR VISUAL VERTIGO
Lead Research Organisation:
Cardiff University
Department Name: Sch of Psychology
Abstract
The proposed PhD project will use innovative, multi-sensory technologies to develop novel assessment and rehabilitation tools relying on effective human-computer interaction.
Visual Vertigo is a heterogeneous condition where certain visual environments trigger debilitating episodes of dizziness and nausea. Environments characterised by repetitive, high-contrast patterns (e.g. supermarkets), are commonly reported triggers but the reason for this is unknown. Current rehabilitation tools for Visual Vertigo are not always effective and patients frequently continue to experience symptoms for months or years after onset. Therefore such patients constitute 30-50% of time allocation in vestibular rehabilitation clinics. Given an aging population and the current under-diagnosis of vestibular problems, this health burden will increase. Thus more effective tools for stratified diagnosis and rehabilitation are urgently needed.
In collaboration with audiological clinicians at University Hospital Wales (UHW), we are piloting a virtual reality approach to improve diagnosis specificity and rehabilitation. Virtual reality allows different features of the visual environment to be directly isolated and manipulated. These range from the rendering of realistic environments like supermarkets, to environments that isolate specific low-level features (e.g. a particular spatial frequency or orientation). The proposed PhD project will build on this pilot work, by developing and testing a suite of virtual reality environments and integrating theses with a motion platform and video capture suite located in Physiotherapy at UHW. This new technological marriage will allow us to investigate, for the first time, visual and vestibular functioning in Visual Vertigo simultaneously, and during realistic locomotion. Our aim is to develop, and quickly bring to clinics, tools to help clinicians identify individual triggers for different patients, and directly feed this information into customised virtual reality rehabilitation tailored to the individual needs of each patient.
Visual Vertigo is a heterogeneous condition where certain visual environments trigger debilitating episodes of dizziness and nausea. Environments characterised by repetitive, high-contrast patterns (e.g. supermarkets), are commonly reported triggers but the reason for this is unknown. Current rehabilitation tools for Visual Vertigo are not always effective and patients frequently continue to experience symptoms for months or years after onset. Therefore such patients constitute 30-50% of time allocation in vestibular rehabilitation clinics. Given an aging population and the current under-diagnosis of vestibular problems, this health burden will increase. Thus more effective tools for stratified diagnosis and rehabilitation are urgently needed.
In collaboration with audiological clinicians at University Hospital Wales (UHW), we are piloting a virtual reality approach to improve diagnosis specificity and rehabilitation. Virtual reality allows different features of the visual environment to be directly isolated and manipulated. These range from the rendering of realistic environments like supermarkets, to environments that isolate specific low-level features (e.g. a particular spatial frequency or orientation). The proposed PhD project will build on this pilot work, by developing and testing a suite of virtual reality environments and integrating theses with a motion platform and video capture suite located in Physiotherapy at UHW. This new technological marriage will allow us to investigate, for the first time, visual and vestibular functioning in Visual Vertigo simultaneously, and during realistic locomotion. Our aim is to develop, and quickly bring to clinics, tools to help clinicians identify individual triggers for different patients, and directly feed this information into customised virtual reality rehabilitation tailored to the individual needs of each patient.
Organisations
Studentship Projects
| Project Reference | Relationship | Related To | Start | End | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EP/N509449/1 | 01/10/2016 | 30/09/2021 | |||
| 1982621 | Studentship | EP/N509449/1 | 01/10/2017 | 30/06/2021 | Ryan Gamble |