Development of Serious Games for the Rehabilitation of the Human Vertebral Spine for Home Care

Abstract

With the occurrence of pandemics, such as COVID-19, which lead to social isolation, there is a need for home rehabilitation procedures without the direct supervision of health professionals. The great difficulty of treatment at home is the cost of the conventional equipment and the need for specialized labor to operate it. Thus, this paper aimed to develop serious games to assist health professionals in the physiotherapy of patients with spinal pain for clinical and home applications. Serious games integrate serious aspects such as teaching, rehabilitation, and information with the playful and interactive elements of video games. Despite the positive indication and benefits of physiotherapy for cases of chronic spinal pain, the long treatment time, social isolation due to pandemics, and lack of motivation to use traditional methods are some of the main causes of therapeutic failure. Using Unity 3D (version 2019.4.24f1) software and a personal computer with a webcam, we developed aesthetically pleasing, smooth, and attractive games, while maintaining the essence of seriousness that is required for rehabilitation. The serious games, controlled using OpenPose (version v1.0.0alpha-1.5.0) software, were tested with a healthy volunteer. The findings demonstrated that the proposed games can be used as a playful tool to motivate patients during physiotherapy and to reduce cases of treatment abandonment, including at home.