A low-cost game framework for a home-based stroke rehabilitation system

Stroke is a major cause of severe physical disability, leading into a variety of impairments. In general, stroke rehabilitation is a process which requires intensive direct physical therapy and is usually guided by physiotherapists. The long and intensive therapy sessions often results in patients losing the motivation to continue with the therapy, and as a result patients do not recover to their prospective. With increasing occurrence of stroke incidence, therapists are under pressure for time. At present most of the rehabilitation programmes are highly human intensive. Thus an innovative game technology that supports stroke rehabilitation may provide new opportunities. The main objective of this paper is to present a new low cost game framework for stroke rehabilitation programme that would increase patients´ motivation for therapy, and also to study the feasibility and effect of a new game based technology to support hand and leg rehabilitation. In this paper, some important new game design principles for hand and leg rehabilitation with a standard angle based representation of the full body motion during exercise, for improving the accuracy of stroke exercise are presented. The design of serious games, with important game design principle frequently linked with worthy user engagement, may offer perceptions into how more effective systems can be developed for stroke rehabilitation. The additional bio-signal and online database will enable evaluation of patient s movement performance.