Abstracts

Rationale: The goal of this project was to generate an animated interactive art therapy studio website as a platform for immersive self-directed education for patients with epilepsy. In particular, the targeted audience included patients and family members living in a Northeastern Illinois community (McHenry, IL). Its development relied heavily on digitizing precise total body movements, facial motion capture and audio of the actual artists diagnosed with epilepsy. These animated personas described their art work, and motivation for creating it.Methods: The mobile hardware consisted of a 17-accelerometer body tracking system (Xsens), and facial motion recognition hardware (Dynamyxyz). Animation development software (AutoDesk) was employed to generate human avatars. Human avatars were created to connect fluid facial and body motion data. Artwork obtained from the Studio E project (Lundbeck, Inc & National Epilepsy Foundation) was imported into the website museum scene. Data generated by the artist’s animation suit was allocated to the avatars upon importing into Autodesk Motion Builder. These animated avatar datasets were then imported into a Unity 3D web-based scene and given components for an immersive gaming experience. Pediatric and adult patients followed in a rural community telehealth outreach initiative (McHenry County, IL) were invited to browse the website. Individual website visits were tracked over a 3 month period. Patients followed in the telehealth outreach initiative were also given permission to log into a private virtual museum room using a unique identifier. Their number of unique visits and visit times were tracked in the virtual room.Results: The use of wireless whole body accelerometer trackers and infrared facial motion recognition hardware provided accurate 3D output of 6 participating artists as avatars with complex body and face movements. The feasibility of the immersive end-user experience was assessed by capturing visits of patients, and caregivers followed in the rural telehealth clinic.Conclusions: This immersive art therapy web-based experience demonstrated a proof-of-concept for an individual-specific self-guided patient experience. Creating a visually rich interactive 3D-animated art therapy studio milieu provides a novel incentive for individuals with epilepsy to interact with the personas of participating artists. Such a user-guided experience more readily connects the experiences and challenges of artists living with epilepsy with those of the end-user. As importantly, the art therapist can utilize such a novel tool to facilitate art therapy sessions. Patients interacting with the web-site also can be tracked when appropriate. Such a visualization-intense strategy, upon accessing a common web-browser and basic computer requirements, can be capitalized on to provide a self-paced immersive and interesting educational experience for the end-user. The website can be accessed at http://www.synapticom.net/videos/.