Development and Verification of a Computer—Aided Platform to Evaluate the Sense of Direction and Route Learning Ability

• Main Authors: Yeuan-shyi Li, 李遠錫
• Other Authors: Ching-Fen Jiang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/31146627516105720004

碩士 === 義守大學 === 生物醫學工程學系碩士班 === 96 === This study proposes the computer-aided platforms to evaluate the sense of direction and the route-learning ability. They are named Virtual Hospital (VH), and Virtual City (VC) respectively. Current methods for evaluation of the sense of direction and the route-learning ability are usually performed by measuring the pointing errors of the subject to a specific landmark and by recording the traveling route and time in a real environment. However, the limitations in practical situation, uncontrollable open-environment, and interferences from the surroundings tend to induce individual-dependent biases and thus restrict the preciseness of the measures. In contrast, the developed computer-aided platform takes the advantage of virtual reality technology and combines with the program that can automatically analyze the pointing error and record walking route and time immediately, such that it can make the evaluation more convenient and robust than the conventional way. We also recruit 60 healthy young subjects to test the reliability and validity of the proposed platforms. The experiment results approve the great feasibility of the application of Virtual Reality techniques to evaluate the sense of direction and the route-learning ability. In addition, we also compare subjects’ performance by using the different size of screens (17” and 120”) and find a better performance with the big screen. Thus, we believe that the developed computer-aided platforms associated with a proper output device have the potential clinical application for cognitive ability assessments.