Postural Stability Analysis in Virtual Reality Using the HTC Vive

Postural stability is an important measure for many medical diseases such as Parkinson. In the last years, research focused on using inexpensive and portable devices to measure postural stability, while the visual targets were physical objects in the environment. Sensing balancing boards were used to measure stance forces, while movements of the upper body were not taken into account. Within this paper, postural stability was measured using the HTC Vive. A variation of a virtual fixation point's distance was analyzed and compared to a reference condition with closed eyes. It is shown that body sway in the VR conditions is increased in the anterior-posterior and decreased in the medial-lateral direction.