Innovative pain management techniques

Abstract

Pain is a prevalent issue in our everyday lives that can significantly affect our well-being. Subjective in nature, various elements affect an individual’s perception of pain. The expanding use of pain analgesia presents numerous issues which can aggravate one’s well-being. Non-trivial pain mitigating methodologies, which aim to alleviate pain without standard analgesia, are therefore required and being explored. Notably, distraction therapy, mindfulness, and meditation are all commonly employed methodologies effectively utilised for pain relief. In the domain of digital health, technology is integrated to improve the quality of medical care. Numerous technologies can be employed for pain mitigation. Virtual Reality (VR) is used in a plethora of research about pain relief due to its immersive and distraction capabilities. Given that pain is multifaceted and complex, numerous variables must be considered in its study. A standard methodology is distinguishing pain as either chronic or acute. Apart from this, other factors such as individual demographics, medical condition, and pain intensity are all elements which might affect one’s perception of pain. This work aims to further the research available in the domain of pain mitigation through the use of VR distraction therapy. Throughout this research, a personalised VR pain mitigation framework is proposed that harnesses the potential of user modelling, progressive content generation, and various VR experiences. The work utilises numerous user profiles consisting of well-known pain-characterising parameters mapped to several environmental elements the users prefer. Classifiers were trained on these profiles and used to generate a personalised environment. Progressive content generation techniques are utilised to create an environment at run-time entirely based on the user’s profile. The solution builds an endless meditative space at run-time, consisting of vegetation, different environments, and animals, amongst other immersive elements. A survey tool was devised to evaluate the framework built, which captured the participants’ characteristics and experience. An experiment was also run consisting of six anonymous participants. During the study, participants were exposed to both a standard and a personalised version of the solution for five-minute sessions. The results show that the average perceived pain intensity decreased by 68.9% from before the experiment session to after the last, significantly reducing perceived pain. Even though the standard environment effectively reduced pain intensity, the personalised environment further introduced a significant 27.5% reduction in perceived pain, displaying the efficacy such a solution has for pain mitigation.