Development of custom-made serious game for trunk post-stroke rehabilitation

Current stroke rehabilitation practices focus on intensive, cognitively demanding, and repetitive exercise regimens. The tedious and repetitive nature of the current rehabilitation therapy may cause the patients to experience demotivation and disengagement. Serious Games are excellent alternatives for engaging stroke patients in rehabilitation therapy and allow higher repetition of movements. However, existing rehabilitation games often overlook the functional movement of the trunk, even though trunk function plays a paramount role in walking and balance ability in stroke survivors. This paper describes a custom-made Serious Game that intends to enhance the quality of trunk rehabilitation therapy using a cost-effective seated force plate-based gaming system (SFPGS). The game was designed and developed based on Serious Game design principles and the fundamentals of movement in physical trunk rehabilitation exercises. In this research, the usability of the game was evaluated via user study. The present results warrant a potential clinical trial in the future to investigate the therapeutic effect of SFPGS in stroke patients.