Virtual arm for the phantom pain therapy

Phantom limb pain appears where an amputated limb used to be and is often excruciating and almost impossible to treat. Recently, two experiments on hand amputees in the neuroscience area have shown that if a patient has the visual illusion of his phantom hand in a way that he is able to move it, the phantom pain can decrease. We propose a new augmented reality system aiming to experiment this idea to arm amputees. Our interactive system provides to single arm amputee the image of himself augmented by a virtual arm. Our system is based on the valid arm detection on frame coming from a single camera, in order to use it to create on the image the virtual arm on the amputated side. By giving a immersive sensation and a realistic image of his complete body to the subject, we anticipate that this could lead to a sense of re-embodiment in the virtual limb as with previous system dedicated to the hand. And then, lead to a reduction of the pain. Moreover, by allowing more freedom we could also expect a better impact rate.