Virtual reality in posturography.
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.
Tossavainen
Timo
T
Department of Computer Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere FI-33014, Finland. tt@cs.uta.fi
Toppila
Esko
E
Pyykkö
Ilmari
I
Forsman
Pia M
PM
Juhola
Martti
M
Starck
Jukka
J
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