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© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Phobias are a type of anxiety disorder characterized by severe fear of objects and situations. In recent years, virtual reality exposure therapy has emerged as a safer and more convenient method of treating phobias, with the same rate of success as classical therapy, the in vivo exposure to stimuli. Following extensive research concerning the available technologies and after studying the state of the art in the field, we developed the PhoVR (Phobia therapy through Virtual Reality) system during a 2-year long project that involved the participation of a technical university, a biology faculty, and an industry partner specialized in designing 3D applications. Our final prototype incorporates scenarios for acrophobia, claustrophobia, and fear of public speaking therapy, in which the user is required to perform gamified tasks and navigate virtual reality environments with biophysical data acquisition (electrodermal activity and heart rate), automatic anxiety level classification, biofeedback integrated into the scenes’ elements, the dynamic adaptation of the virtual environments, and relaxation techniques made available at any moment. The control panel is an application dedicated to psychotherapists for managing patients’ profiles and therapy sessions. The feedback obtained in a qualitative survey with subjects and psychotherapists who evaluated the prototype validated the system and provided suggestions for refinement.

Details

Title
Immersive Phobia Therapy through Adaptive Virtual Reality and Biofeedback
Author
Moldoveanu, Alin 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Mitruț, Oana 1 ; Jinga, Nicolae 1 ; Petrescu, Cătălin 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Moldoveanu, Florica 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Asavei, Victor 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Anghel, Ana Magdalena 1 ; Petrescu, Livia 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest, 060042 Bucharest, Romania; [email protected] (A.M.); [email protected] (N.J.); [email protected] (C.P.); [email protected] (F.M.); [email protected] (V.A.); [email protected] (A.M.A.) 
 Faculty of Biology, University of Bucharest, 010014 Bucharest, Romania; [email protected] 
First page
10365
Publication year
2023
Publication date
2023
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20763417
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2869241932
Copyright
© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.