Experiencing Mirror Therapy in a Virtual Reality Environment

The development of virtual reality technologies promises new opportunities for mirror therapy. It allows the addition of gamification elements and gives patients the opportunity to practice independently, in their own time and at their own location. Even though studies show positive difference between standard and virtual reality mirror therapy, underlying factors that could impact these differences are yet to be studied. In this study standard mirror therapy using a real mirror was compared to a virtual reality setup in terms of psychophysical effects, usability, and virtual presence of healthy participants. We found that although participants experienced psychophysical effects in both setups, this was significantly lower for the virtual reality setup. Additionally, participants found the system easy to use, but the virtual reality environment scored low in terms of experienced realism which could have attributed to the lower number of psychophysical effects in the virtual reality setup. These results provide additional grounds for further development and research into the application of virtual reality applications for mirror therapy.