University of Twente Student Theses
The development of a Mixed Reality application to support physical prehabilitation exercises at home
Wetselaar, B.M. (2025) The development of a Mixed Reality application to support physical prehabilitation exercises at home.
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| Abstract: | The healthcare system in the Netherlands, amongst others, experiences staff shortages. This requires different approaches to cover the growing demand for healthcare because of the ageing population. The government of the Netherlands and the European Commission introduced a variety of initiatives. Two of these initiatives focus on shifting healthcare to home and implementing technological innovations where possible. This is precisely where this study focuses: a combination of using technology to provide healthcare at home. Specifically, this study aims to develop an MR application for a Head Mounted Display to support home-based prehabilitation, a preventive strategy to prepare patients undergoing oncological abdominal surgery. Input is gathered from medical experts to form a set of exercises to include in the MR prototype. Additionally, various design methods are used to create multiple ideas for developing the prototype. Feedback is gathered from people of a similar age as patients (55 to 85 years) undergoing oncological abdominal surgery. A final concept is chosen and developed into an interactive prototype in a Meta Quest 3. The prototype is tested in a home environment with nine healthy participants to gather feedback on the feasibility of the prototype. To get reliable results, the prototype is compared to exercise videos that are part of a prehabilitation application suggested to be feasible for at-home use. The nine participants test both interventions in random order. Measurements included the Intrinsic Motivation Inventory, the Perceived Borg Exertion Scale, semi-structured interviews and observations. A former physiotherapist accompanied the tests to ensure safety and evaluate the safety and execution of the movements. It is seen that the MR application – Dojo Dodging, developed for this study, shows potential for supporting physical prehabilitation at home. The IMI score indicated that the Interest category for the MR application (5.6) was significantly higher (W =1.0, p=0.008) than the interest of the exercise videos (3.5). |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 01 general works |
| Programme: | Interaction Technology MSc (60030) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/106270 |
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