Interaction Modalities Used on Serious Games for Upper Limb Rehabilitation: A Systematic Review

Area of Science:

• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Game Design

Background:

• Serious games offer engaging platforms for physical therapy.
• Upper limb rehabilitation is crucial for recovery from various injuries and conditions.
• Interaction modalities significantly influence the effectiveness of serious games in rehabilitation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review and analyze the state-of-the-art interaction modalities used in serious games for upper limb rehabilitation.
• To identify trends, common practices, and limitations of current interaction methods.
• To suggest future research directions based on identified gaps.

Main Methods:

• Systematic literature search in IEEE Xplore and Web of Science databases.
• Application of PRISMA and QualSyst protocols for article selection and quality assessment.
• Inclusion criteria: English language, ≥4 pages, serious games, upper limb rehabilitation focus, published 2007-2017.

Main Results:

• 33 articles met inclusion criteria from 121 retrieved.
• Three main interaction modalities identified: vision systems (42.4%), complementary vision systems (30.3%), and no-vision systems (27.2%).
• Vision systems (using Kinect) and no-vision systems showed similar quality scores (86%); shoulder rehabilitation was most common (19%).

Conclusions:

• Vision systems are the most prevalent interaction modality in serious games for upper limb rehabilitation.
• Limitations include environmental sensitivity (lighting) for vision systems and accuracy issues for no-vision systems.
• Future research should explore finger rehabilitation, adaptive difficulty, and multi-sensor data fusion.