AR glasses may enable safe Parkinson’s physiotherapy at home
Study explores approach pairing physical exercise with interactive digital games
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- Parkinson's disease causes motor symptoms like slowed movement, tremors, and balance issues.
- Augmented reality glasses may provide a safe, home-based physiotherapy approach, a study reports.
- Therapists remotely monitor and prescribe exercises to help patients safely improve mobility and adaptability.
Physiotherapy using augmented reality (AR) glasses may offer a feasible, safe, and user-friendly way for people with Parkinson’s disease to practice walking and balance exercises at home, a study found.
The approach combines physical exercise with interactive digital games, allowing people to train at home while therapists remotely prescribe and monitor their training.
The findings are part of doctoral research by psychologist Lotte Hardeman at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands, according to a university news story.
Games designed to help with walking, balance
Parkinson’s disease is caused by the loss of nerve cells that produce dopamine, a chemical messenger involved in controlling movement. This can lead to motor symptoms such as slowed movement, tremor, muscle stiffness, and impaired balance, which can make walking difficult and increase the risk of falling.
Physiotherapy and regular exercise can help people manage these symptoms and maintain mobility. However, access to rehabilitation sessions can be challenging due to the limited availability of healthcare professionals and the time and effort required to attend appointments.
AR glasses are wearable devices that add digital objects to a person’s view of their actual surroundings. As part of her doctoral work, Hardeman worked with a digital rehabilitation platform called Reality DTx, which delivers a combination of exercise and gaming through these wearable AR glasses. The games are designed to help with walking, balance, and the ability to adapt movements to changing situations.
Participants completed 104% of their prescribed sessions
In a six-week feasibility study, 24 people with Parkinson’s disease used the technology at home. They were asked to complete five sessions per week, each involving 30 minutes of active exercise.
Therapists used an online portal to prescribe and manage training, adjusting the exercises weekly based on objective measurements and participants’ feedback. The difficulty, type of game, frequency, and duration could be tailored to individual abilities and needs.
Participants completed 104% of their prescribed sessions and 88% of the prescribed active exercise time, indicating high adherence. No falls occurred during the six-week study, and participants rated their experience with the technology from above average to excellent.
The researchers also observed clinically meaningful improvements in mobility, and significant improvements in patient’s ability to adapt to more challenging walking situations, such as avoiding obstacles.
Interviews with people with Parkinson’s and healthcare professionals generally found the approach acceptable and potentially useful as a complement to conventional physiotherapy.
However, participants differed in how effective and physically demanding they found the exercises. They also highlighted the importance of therapist supervision and feedback, as well as and social interaction with others with the disease. More varied games, greater flexibility, and clearer ways to track progress could help maintain engagement, they added.
Games’ potential to provide more intensive exercise explored
As part of her work, Hardeman also explored whether the games could provide more intensive exercise. In a separate study involving 15 participants, 9 to 14 of them reached moderate-to-vigorous aerobic exercise intensity, with the exact number depending on how exercise intensity was measured. This suggests that appropriately configured games may eventually combine walking and balance training with cardiovascular exercise.
Hardeman’s thesis also discusses the potential for incorporating motor-cognitive training, which combines physical movement with mental tasks, into future rehabilitation programs. However, the clinical benefits of this approach remain to be established.
Despite the promising findings, Hardeman notes that practical and organizational challenges could limit adoption. Therapists need sufficient time and resources to supervise remote training and provide feedback, while ensuring that exercises are appropriate for people with different physical abilities and levels of symptom severity.
She also noted that current reimbursement arrangements do not adequately support digital care delivered at home, which may discourage physiotherapy clinics from adopting this approach.
Overall, while the findings support the feasibility of a digital training approach as a complement to conventional physiotherapy, larger and longer-term studies will be needed to establish whether the home-based therapy produces meaningful and sustained benefits for people with Parkinson’s disease.
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