Performance of Real and Virtual Object Handling Task Between Post-Surgery Wrist Fracture Patients and Healthy Adults

Background: Humans interacting with virtual objects is becoming common due to the popularity of the devices adopting the mixed reality (MR) techniques. Assessing hand functions using these devices for medical purposes provides alternatives in addition to the traditional hand function assessment techniques. Objectives: The objectives were to compare the movement time (MT) of handing a real and a virtual object between post-surgery wrist fracture patients and healthy adults and to determine the correlation between the MT and commonly adopted hand function indicators. Methods: An experiment was performed. A total of 29 participants, including 17 patients and 12 healthy adults, joined. All the participants moved a real or a virtual tube from an origin to a destination. A set of MR device was adopted to generate the virtual object. The MTs were analyzed to compare differences between the patients and the healthy adults. Regression models were developed to predict the MT under experimental conditions. Results: The MT of the surgical hand was significantly longer than that of the nonsurgical hand of the patients and was significantly longer than that of the left hand of the healthy adults. The MT was negatively correlated with the commonly adopted hand function indicators, including grip strength, range of motion, hand dexterity score, and Modified Mayo Wrist Score. Conclusions: The anticipation that the MT of interacting with virtual objects for patients may reveal hand function characteristics for post-surgery patients was supported. The regression models developed could reveal the progression of hand function recovery for these patients. Having patients interact with virtual objects could be a supplemental approach in assessing their hand functions.