Veterans Will Be First to Try Cyber Physical Therapy
From: Medical Design technology - 06/11/2015

In an effort to connect physical therapy with wounded veterans far from
treatment facilities, researchers from the University of Texas (UT) at Dallas
have developed a rehabilitation system that uses real-time video, 3D
computer-generated worlds and force-feedback "haptic" devices to re-create a
physical therapy session between a patient and a therapist, all at long
distance over high-speed networks.

To bring the tele-rehabilitation to life, the system uses Microsoft Kinect to
create 3D, real-time models of the patient and the doctor. The models then
join a shared virtual environment, a computer-generated space customized by
the participants.

To simulate the touch aspect of the physical therapy session, the patient
responds to a touch-sensitive "haptic" arm controlled by the therapist via a
paired haptic device.

The research team demonstrated a physical therapy session in which two
individuals practice sawing a log, a task that mimics the movements used by
recovering stroke patients. The participants feel both the resistance of the
log and the guiding movements of their partner, just as would occur at an
in-person therapy session.

Read the entire article and view a video (5:46) at:
http://www.mdtmag.com/news/2015/06/veterans-will-be-first-try-cyber-physical-therapy

Link:
Veterans to get virtual rehab
http://gcn.com/articles/2015/06/17/virtual-rehab.aspx