Rehabilitation of Aphasia after Stroke with Physical and Virtual Integrated System

Aphasia after stroke is a common disease.Studies indicated that virtual reality and tangible interactions can effectively assist rehabilitation of aphasia after stroke.However,few existing computer-assisted language training systems integrated the two methods and took the advantages of both successfully.Further,language training materials were not reasonably arranged to adapt the scenarios of aphasia rehabilitation in previous works.This paper presented a physical and virtual integrated language training system(PVLT)for the rehabilitation of aphasia after stroke.The developed training system composed of a virtual supermarket where language training materials are arranged based on a semantic network theory.Physical objects were tracked and recognized,and then integrated with the virtual supermarket to enable users to navigate the supermarket by manipulating physical objects.User performance of task completion time shows the usability of the system.Results of a questionnaire survey show that the system is appreciated by language therapists.The summarized user suggestions provide valuable insights to future research in this area.