A 3D Pedagogical Agent Enhanced Virtual Therapy System for People with Idiopathic Parkinson Disease

The prevalence of disordered communication is particularly high in individuals diagnosed with idiopathic Parkinson disease (IPD). At least 89% of these individuals have disordered speech and voice but only 3-4% received speech treatment. LSVT (Lee Silverman Voice Treatment) is a speech and voice treatment for individuals with Parkinson disease. It is the only speech treatment with Level one short and long-term efficacy data for Parkinson disease. LSVT teaches people to think and talk Loud. In this paper, we developed a LSVT virtual speech therapy system based on a pedagogical animated agent. The main goals of this system is to develop a fully automated computer application in which a pedagogical animated agent interacts with an individual with IPD much like a human therapist to increase the loudness and improve the quality and intelligibility of the patient’s speech, thus provide an accessible, engaging, inexpensive and highly effective means of improving communication skills, self esteem and quality of everyday life of individuals with IPD.