A Serious Game with Leap Motion for Hand Motor Function Assessment

Stroke causes damage to specific brain areas, resulting in a loss of motor control on one side of the body, often manifesting as unilateral hand or upper limb movement disorders. Hand movement disorders require long-term rehabilitation and regular functional assessment. Currently, the primary method of assessing a patient's motor function involves clinicians instructing patients to complete tasks on an exercise scale. However, when patients undergo in-home rehabilitation, clinicians cannot regularly assess them, limiting the effectiveness of rehabilitation training. Hence, this study introduces a serious game that automatically assesses the degree of hand-motor impairment in stroke patients. The game involves four virtual guided tasks for hand motor function assessment, where each task requires completing different hand motions. Based on the clinician's expertise, the hand motions constructed correspond to motor features that reflect the functional indicators of the patient's hand. These motor characteristics correlate significantly with the Wolf Motor Function Test, primarily used to assess upper limb motor function in hemiplegic patients. The proposed method is based on experimental data from 10 healthy participants and 17 stroke patients with hemiplegia. The results show that this serious game can effectively discriminate between healthy individuals and patients with severe, moderate or mild hemiplegia. Furthermore, this game-based assessment method is easily applicable to home rehabilitation scenarios and the majority of users have a positive attitude towards it.