Assessment of the cervical spine mobility by immersive and non-immersive virtual reality

Introduction: Despite many devices are helpful for motion analysis, there is still no established standard technique for the assessment of cervical spine mobility. Objective: To compare differences in using immersive or non-immersive virtual reality (VR) for the assessment of the sensorimotor movement of the cervical spine in healthy subjects. Methods: Thirty-five healthy adults were asked to perform head rotation, flexion, extension, lateral flexion, reaching and repositioning tasks with the head. The same tasks were performed interacting with both non-immersive and immersive virtual reality. Random sequence determined which of the environments was used as first assessment. Range of motion and kinematics i.e. number of completed targets, time of execution (seconds), spatial length (cm), angle distance (°), jerk of the cervical spine, were automatically computed by a 6D electromagnetic motion tracking system. Results: The following variables were significantly larger in immersive than non-immersive VR: head right rotation (p = 0.027), extension (p = 0.047), flexion (p = 0.000), time (p = 0.001), spatial length (p = 0.004), jerk target (p = 0.032), trajectory repositioning (p = 0.003), jerk target repositioning (p = 0.007). A regression model showed that assessment in both VR environments can be influenced by dependent and independent variables. Conclusions: Immersive VR provided more accurate measurement of cervical spine than non-immersive VR in healthy adults.