Preprint A Game Based Assistive Tool for Rehabilitation of Dysphonic Patients
This work addresses a specific problem for dysphonic patients and therapists by providing an incremental tool for rehabilitation training.
The paper tackles the rehabilitation of dysphonic patients by designing an assistive tool that uses a space flight game and microphone arrays for voice training, allowing therapists to guide patients without interference and enabling progress evaluation through recorded voice data.
This is the preprint version of our paper on 3rd International Workshop on Virtual and Augmented Assistive Technology (VAAT) at IEEE Virtual Reality 2015 (VR2015). An assistive training tool for rehabilitation of dysphonic patients is designed and developed according to the practical clinical needs. The assistive tool employs a space flight game as the attractive logic part, and microphone arrays as input device, which is getting rid of ambient noise by setting a specific orientation. The therapist can guide the patient to play the game as well as the voice training simultaneously side by side, while not interfere the patient voice. The voice information can be recorded and extracted for evaluating the long-time rehabilitation progress. This paper outlines a design science approach for the development of an initial useful software prototype of such a tool, considering 'Intuitive', 'Entertainment', 'Incentive' as main design factors.