A Novel Multimodal Physiological Monitoring System for Virtual Reality-Based Addiction Therapy

Abstract

As conventional substance use disorder (SUD) treatments often fail to prevent patient relapse upon reexposure to SUD-related stimuli, virtual reality (VR) has recently emerged as a popular hypothetical medium for an enhanced form of SUD cue exposure therapy (CET). However, a successful augmented reality-based CET treatment necessitates an active mechanism to detect and quantify physiological responses to various VR-simulated cues in order to enable dynamic evaluation of CET progress, and currently, available patient monitoring technologies are often limited in scope. To that end, this project aimed to create a novel non-invasive physiological monitoring system with the ability to provide a live comprehensive assessment of stress and related indicative biological parameters. The final synthesized system encompasses a wide range of key physiologic measures, including pulse, heart rate variability, galvanic skin response, respiratory rate, and electrocardiographic oscillation, and can be combined with waveforms from an electroencephalography headset to generate additional insights. An Arduino microcontroller enables robust sensory integration, and raw data processing is achieved through several C++ and Java algorithms. The system demonstrated high performance and wearability across several tests in a simulated stress-inducing environment, and future use is anticipated in an upcoming VR-based CET treatment.