Naslov
Physiology-Driven Adaptive Control of Scenarios in VR Based Therapy of PTSD

Autori
Ćosić, Krešimir ; Slamić, Miroslav ; Popović, Siniša ; Kukolja, Davor

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Izvornik
CyberTherapy 12: Transforming Healthcare through Technology / - : Interactive Media Institute (IMI), 2007

Skup
12th Annual CyberTherapy Conference: Transforming Healthcare through Technology

Mjesto i datum
Washington D.C., Sjedinjene Američke Države, 11.06.2007. - 14.06.2007

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
Virtual Reality; Posttraumatic Stress Disorder; Therapy; Physiology; Adaptation

Sažetak
Application of virtual reality (VR) to the treatment of psychological disorders experiences significant expansion and is projected to further increase in the future. As various massive traumatic events occur around the globe, their psychological consequences, like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), affect numerous individuals and their societies. While VR based therapy of PTSD has shown its promise in several applications, there are different avenues for further improvements. This presentation describes research and development of a VR system for PTSD therapy, which incorporates automated adaptation of VR scenarios according to the subject’ s arousal. Estimation of arousal is conducted via automated interpretation of the subject’ s psychophysiological biofeedback signals. Properly performed automated adaptation can strengthen the focus of the supervisor (therapist) on the essential parts of the therapy, by minimizing manipulation of the graphical user interface and monitoring of the subject’ s psychophysiological signals. Architecture of the system is presented through descriptions of several block diagrams. A distinct diagram describes system functionality and consists of five major subsystems. Stimulation Subsystem deals with rendering of the virtual environment, i.e. delivering visual and audio stimuli to the subject. Subject’ s Response Subsystem / Artificial Subject performs capturing of the subject’ s arousal via physiological measurements, or generating artificial physiological response from computer models. Adaptive Control Subsystem handles automated adaptation of virtual environment driven by physiology of real or artificial subject. Supervisor’ s Subsystem provides the supervisor with a 2D-3D console to monitor the subject’ s arousal measures and events in the virtual environment. Supervisor may also use the subsystem to control the work of Adaptive Control Subsystem. Comparative Analyses Subsystem serves to identify appropriate set of physiological indicators of arousal and their boundary values that separate different levels of arousal. This subsystem is also subsequently used for cross-comparison of subject’ s data between sessions and with existing reference data. A first version prototype has been designed and developed, consisting of an integrated system with automated physiology-driven changes in the virtual environment. During the development of the prototype, an artificial subject has been used in place of a real subject. Using a simple artificial subject has facilitated testing and verification of the prototype, which would have been more complicated if nondeterministic real subject’ s physiology had been used. As greater accuracy of models of human physiological reactions to stressful events is needed for later versions of the system, the article presents some ideas regarding design and development of more complex models. The prototype incorporates rudimentary adaptive logic for introducing events in the virtual environment in response to the artificial subject’ s physiology. Eventually, the complexity of the adaptive logic will increase considerably, to provide for accurate interpretation of the realistic physiological signals and support versatile VR scenarios. Therefore, the article also describes an approach to managing forthcoming complexity in scenario adaptation.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Elektrotehnika, Računarstvo, Kliničke medicinske znanosti

POVEZANOST RADA