Construction of a haptic-based virtual reality evaluation of discrimination of stiffness and texture

Abstract

Sensory impairments have a negative impact on performance. We designed and validated a haptic-based Virtual Reality (VR) system for the evaluation of discrimination of stiffness/texture and tested its agreement with current conventional tactile sensibility evaluations. Forty-four individuals (age 25.2 ± 4.1) performed three tactile tests: the newly constructed haptic-based VR system, the Shape/Texture Identification Test (STI), and the Moberg Pick-Up Test. Bland-Altman plots tested for agreement between the haptic-based VR system and the standard tests. We found very good agreements (>95% of the data points lies within ±2SD of the mean difference) between the haptic-based VR scores and the scores of the conventional tests, except in the cases of the STI trial, when performed with the non-dominant hand, and the Moberg Pick-Up Test when performed with the dominant hand with open eyes. The advantages of the haptic-based VR evaluation of discrimination of stiffness and texture and its agreement with standard tests of sensory loss might suggest that the system can be used in the clinical settings.

Keywords

• neuropathy
• occupational therapy
• clinical evaluation