ARVR

Introduction

This topic mainly revolved around, Phantom Pain(PP). PP is nothing but pain or pain like feeling associated with that part of the body which no longer exists. The non existence of the limb can be accounted for variety of reasons, such as ampuation due to medical faactors or loss of a limb in a tragedy(say war). Lets take for example, a veteran lost his arm during a war and just before those seconds when his arm was about to be damaged, his fists were tight. Due to tight fists, even after the war, the muscles cannot relax as a whole. Due to such reasons the veteran will always have a pain like sensation or an uncomfortableness in his arm. This exact example has been given in one of the TV Series named "House MD" in which the starred docotor treats such a veteran with a 'Mirror Therapy'. Here is the video clip

The topic presented in the class, replaces the mirror therapy with VR and AR technology to mimic an account for the lost arm with the help of arm which is present on the human body. This tenchology takes into account all the details such as EM pulses from the actual arm to mimic that on the Phantom arm. This application of AR and VR, on the humanitarian grounds, is the direct approach for the betterment of such subjects and society as whole. This technique is called, 'Phantom Motor Execution' OR 'PME'

PME records the signals to the nerves near the point of amputation to mimic the movement of the arm in the virtual arm. It then displays the virtual arm on the screen where the user can see both the arms. Although PME is non intrusive and non medicinal technique, it has its own pros and cons when compared to other techiniques which are also non medicial, such as Mirror Technique. Lets dive into pros and cons.

Pros.

1. As mentioned above, this is the most astonishing application of AR and VR. Movements of the muscles exactly at the tip of amputation is being mimicked to account for the lost arm. This leads to direct targetting of the muscles and hence no doubt of the results obtained in the study.

2. Second best part about this approach is the 'serious gaming'. Serious gaming forces the individual to completely dive into the game and forget about the lost arm/limb. Even a minute of this excercise is enough for such subjects to pump up the excitement and mentally connect with their missing limb.

Cons.

1. If you observe the mirror technique in the video carefully, the subject is instructed to clench the fist very tightly. The tightness of the arms appears to be obvious because of the forearm muscles. This obviousness is very important in making an individual believe that he/she has clenched the fist tightly on both the arms. This makes me question the effectiveness of the AR-VR technique a little bit at is it does not demonstrate such detail involvement of the graphics.

Conclusion.

This applicaion of AR-VR undoubtedly has a huge upside potential. However, I am still not convinced with the effectiveness of this application. The reason behind not being convinced are a few which include, low empirical grounds, comparision of this technique with the other techniqies and low graphical demostration of the missing limb. Although this application can have a great impact on all the suffering subjects, this is still far away from being deemed to be perfect for treatment of such individuals. This claim can be waived off with proper empirical results of effectiveness of PME when compared to traditional techniques.

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