Virtual arm for the phantom pain therapy
Résumé
Phantom limb pain appears where an amputated limb used to be and is
often excruciating and almost impossible to treat. Recently, two
experiments on hand amputees in the neuroscience area have shown
that if a patient has the visual illusion of his phantom hand in a
way that he is able to move it, the phantom pain can decrease. In
this context, we propose an augmented reality system. Our
interactive system provides to single arm amputee the image of
himself augmented by a virtual arm. It is based on the valid arm
detection on each frame from a single camera, in order to use it to
create on the image the virtual arm on the amputated side. By giving
a immersive sensation and a realistic image of his complete body to
the subject, we anticipate that this could lead to a sense of
re-embodiment in the virtual limb as with previous system dedicated
to the hand. And then, lead to a reduction of the pain. Moreover, by
allowing more freedom we could also expect a better impact rate.
Later, we plan to extend it to other limb.