Virtual Reality Helps Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

This paper concerns computer applications in medicine that exploit the potentially powerful interconnection between psychology (the mind) and physiology (the body). An important class of applications involve patients who suffer chronic pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis (RA); these patients look for any kind of therapeutic technique to use in addition to traditional medicine in order to alleviate pain, reduce physical disabilities caused by the disease or delay disease progress and improve their lifestyle. This paper focuses on a particular class of therapeutic techniques that provide imagery therapy using virtual reality in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. The paper presents a short review of virtual reality (VR) equipment and their use to provide immersive experiences. Furthermore, we describe imagery therapy (IT) involving guided imagery and illustrate its effects. We particularly describe the application of VR and IT in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. A brief introduction to our system and the research we have done in this field is presented, showing some preliminary results that support our hypothesis.