title: Virtual reality in posturography.
abstract: Balance dysfunctions are common, especially among elderly people. Present methods for the diagnosis and evaluation of severity of dysfuntion have limited value. We present a system that makes it easy to implement different visual and mechanical perturbations for clinical investigations of balance and visual-vestibular interaction. The system combines virtual reality visual stimulation with force platform posturography on a moving platform. We evaluate our contruction's utility in a classification task between 33 healthy controls and 77 patients with Ménière's disease, using a series of tests with different visual and mechanical stimuli. Responses of patients and controls differ significantly in parameters computed from stabilograms. We also show that the series of tests achieves a classification accuracy slightly over 80% between controls and patients.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere FI-33014, Finland. tt@cs.uta.fi
authors.forename: Timo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Tossavainen
authors.forename: Esko
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Toppila
authors.forename: Ilmari
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pyykkö
authors.forename: Pia M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Forsman
authors.forename: Martti
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Juhola
authors.forename: Jukka
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Starck
mesh_terms: D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003936:Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008575:Meniere Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000379:methods; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D010812:Physical Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D004856:Postural Balance; D011187:Posture; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014584:User-Computer Interface