Virtual Reality-based Therapies Aid Stroke Victims

Helping stroke patients regain use of their hands and arms through innovative robotic and virtual reality-based video game therapies is the goal of Sergei Adamovich, associate professor of biomedical engineering. With funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), he leads a team in the design of optimal, personalized, and dynamic strategies for rehabilitation of hand and arm function in patients with such disorders as cerebral palsy and stroke. The team utilizes brain imaging to evaluate the effects of sensory manipulation on brain activation patterns and to learn more about the changes that take place in the brain during rehabilitation.

Adamovich, who co-director of NJIT’s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center, has been collaborating for over 10 years with two research scientists and physical therapists at UMDNJ – Alma Merians, chair of the Rehabilitation and Movement Sciences Department, and Assistant Professor Eugene Tunik. The team’s immediate objective is to help individuals who have had a stroke with an innovative approach to rehabilitation. They are also exploring how this promising therapeutic strategy may actually change neural connections in the brain as a patient’s motor functions improve. Also on the team are NJIT doctoral students Qinyin Qiu, Soha Saleh, and Ian Lafond.

The study brings volunteer stroke patients to Adamovich’s lab for two weeks of intensive therapy using virtual reality “video games” and robotic devices. Virtual-reality (VR) environments have been created to challenge volunteers with tasks they find difficult due to their strokes. Patients with arm as well as hand impairment have been asked to reach out in virtual environments to burst bubbles, take cups from a shelf and place them on a table, use a hammer, and gently capture and release birds perched at different levels on trees. The goal is to improve the speed, smoothness and range of motion of shoulder and elbow movements.

The VR Piano Trainer is another therapeutic activity, designed to train the patient’s ability to move the hand through space accurately and flex each finger independently. The simulation plays the appropriate notes as they are pressed by the virtual fingers. The position and orientation of both hands, as well as the flexion and abduction of each finger are recorded in real time using a Data-Glove and translated into movement in their three dimensional counterparts. 

“Stroke rehabilitation programs are most effective when they both engage and increasingly challenge the patient,” Adamovich says. “An engaging virtual environment can aid in this sense by systematically adapting the difficulty of a task to the ability of patients as they progress, and by motivating longer engagement in exercises than would likely be the case with conventional therapy.”

For an in-depth look at Adamovich’s research, read an article from the winter 2010 issue of NJIT Magazine. Anyone interested in participating in the stroke rehabilitation program should contact NJIT Associate Professor Sergei Adamovich at 973-596-3413 or sergei.adamovich@njit.edu.