Title Participants "Virtually unexpected : no role for expectancy violation in virtual reality exposure for public speaking anxiety" "Sara Scheveneels, Yannick Boddez, Tom Van Daele, Dirk Hermans" "Mental fatigue delays visual search behaviour in young cyclists when negotiating complex traffic situations : a study in virtual reality" "Linus Zeuwts, Evelien Iliano, Mitchell Smith, Frederik Deconinck, Matthieu Lenoir" "Introduction: Mental fatigue has been shown to negatively affect motor and sport performance. To date, however, no research focused on assessing the effects of mental fatigue on hazard perception in young cyclists who are highly vulnerable in traffic, especially after school. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of induced mental fatigue on hazard perception and anticipation in young cyclists using a novel Virtual Reality bicycle simulator. Methods: In this randomised, counterbalanced, cross-over investigation, forty-eight young cyclists cycled through a Virtual Environment (VE) in which they were confronted with eight simple and six complex traffic situations. Simple traffic situations are considered events including only one other actor can cause a dangerous situation while complex traffic situations include multiple actors than contribute to the dangerous situation. Half of the children were mentally fatigued using the Stroop colour-word task while the other half immediately started the VR hazard perception test. On the second test occasion, one month later, the other half of the group was mentally fatigued. Results: The results demonstrate that mentally fatigued cyclists fixated the relevant areas of interest (AOIs) in the simple and complex later and showed delayed response times for the complex hazards. Mental fatigue, however, did not alter the speed with which participants cycled through the virtual environment and did not change the hazard perception score. Conclusion: To our knowledge, this was the first study to investigate the effect of mental fatigue in young cyclists with an innovative VR hazard perception simulator. Due to increased mental fatigue, young cyclists might have experienced more episodes of fatigue-related mind-wandering and a deterioration of selective attention for the task at hand. This resulted in a less thorough visual inspection of the scene and delayed braking responses." "Visual feedback manipulation in virtual reality to influence pain-free range of motion. Are people with non-specific neck pain who are fearful of movement more susceptible?" "Maaike Kragting, Lennard Voogt, Michel W Coppieters, Annelies L Pool-Goudzwaard" "BACKGROUND: Movement-evoked pain may have a protective or learned component, influenced by visual cues which suggest that the person is moving towards a position that may be perceived as threatening. We investigated whether visual feedback manipulation in virtual reality (VR) had a different effect on cervical pain-free range of motion (ROM) in people with fear of movement.METHOD: In this cross-sectional study, seventy-five people with non-specific neck pain (i.e., neck pain without a specific underlying pathology) rotated their head until the onset of pain, while wearing a VR-headset. Visual feedback about the amount of movement was equal, 30% smaller or 30% larger than their actual rotation. ROM was measured using the VR-headset sensors. The effect of VR manipulation in fearful (N = 19 using the Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia (TSK) and N = 18 using the Fear Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire-physical activity (FABQpa)) and non-fearful (N = 46; non-fearful on both scales) people was compared using mixed-design ANOVAs.RESULTS: Fear of movement, influenced the effect of visual feedback manipulation on cervical pain-free ROM (TSK: p = 0.036, ղp2 = 0.060; FABQpa: p = 0.020, ղp2 = 0.077); a greater amplitude of pain-free movement was found when visual feedback reduced the perceived rotation angle compared to the control condition (TSK: p = 0.090, ղp2 = 0.104; FABQpa: p = 0.030, ղp2 = 0.073). Independent of the presence of fear, visual feedback manipulation reduced the cervical pain-free ROM in the overstated condition (TSK: p< 0.001, ղp2 = 0.195; FABQpa: p" "What did you expect? Modelling quality of experience for virtual reality using the repertory grid technique" "Jolien De Letter, Aleksandra Zheleva, Mathias Maes, Anissa All, Lieven De Marez, Wouter Durnez" "Research and development of a low-cost, portable visual field testing platform using a smartphone and virtual reality headset for the early detection of glaucoma" "Esmael Kedir Nida" "Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, affecting about 64 million people. A large proportion of glaucoma cases worldwide are undiagnosed or sub-optimally managed. More than half of people living with the disease, in low-income countries, are unaware of the condition until it progresses to an advanced stage, resulting in visual impairment. Since adequate treatment significantly slows or halts progression of the disease, early detection of cases is considered important. Visual field test is one of the major tests for screening and diagnosis of glaucoma. The test assesses central and peripheral vision of each eye separately in order to detect vision loss, which, in case of glaucoma, gradually progresses from the periphery to the center. The test is mostly performed with standard automated perimetry equipment which is expensive and not easily portable. For people living in rural areas of low-income countries with limited access to ophthalmic care, glaucoma screening and diagnosis testing through visual field test is near inexistent. If an affordable alternative to the standard automated perimetry(SAP) equipment would become available, it is likely that more glaucoma cases could be detected, especially in rural areas where the burden of the disease is most significant. This doctoral dissertation describes the design, development and assessment of a smartphone based low-cost and portable glaucoma visual field screening platform. This doctoral dissertation aims to explore the feasibility of a low-cost and portable visual field screening platform for the early detection of glaucoma, using a smartphone and a virtual reality(VR) headset. To address this aim, the following research questions will be answered. RQ1: What are the needs and preferences of ophthalmic professionals and patients in rural areas of developing countries towards a visual field screening platform using smartphone and VR headset? RQ2: How do we design and develop a mobile app for visual field screening tailored to the needs of ophthalmic professionals and patients from rural areas? RQ3: What are ophthalmic professionals' use and acceptance of a glaucoma screening platform using smartphone and VR headset? RQ4: What is the accuracy of a glaucoma screening platform using smartphone and VR headset compared to a gold standard perimetry equipment? RQ5: What is the sensitivity and specificity of a glaucoma screening platform using smartphone and VR headset? An adopted version of the user-centered design (UCD) process was followed to address most of the research questions. First, a user and task analysis is conducted in Southwest Ethiopia to identify requirements for a visual field screening application. Multiple contextual requirements were identified during this step using field observations, semi-structured interviews with ophthalmic professionals and patients. Next, design parameters and devices (smartphone and VR headset) were selected based on the requirements identified. Next, a prototype screening Android app, glaucoma easy screener(GES), is developed. Following this, the screening app was assessed for usability and acceptability among ophthalmic professionals in Southwest Ethiopia. OPs perceived GES as easy-to-use, enabling the screening of glaucoma screening tests, especially during outreach to rural areas. Even older patients from rural areas, with limited familiarity with technology, were able to perform the test with GES, and valued a 'technical' assessment. Next, clinical accuracy of GES was evaluated by comparing its results against gold standard SAP equipment. There was good level of agreement (above 85%) based on results of 36 eyes. Finally, an assessment of sensitivity and specificity was conducted by testing 40 glaucomatous eyes and 20 normal eyes with the screening platform. Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) was used to determine an optimal cut-off points that yields the best combination of sensitivity and specificity. A cut-off value of 3 missed point yielded an acceptable trade-off between sensitivity (90%) and specificity (85%). These findings suggest that low-cost and portable glaucoma visual field screening using smartphone and VR headsets is feasible." "Visual delay affects force scaling and weight perception during object lifting in virtual reality" "Vonne van Polanen, Marco Davare" "Lifting an object requires precise scaling of fingertip forces based on a prediction of object weight. At object contact, a series of tactile and visual events arise that need to be rapidly processed online to fine-tune the planned motor commands for lifting the object. The brain mechanisms underlying multisensory integration serially at transient sensorimotor events, a general feature of actions requiring hand-object interactions, are not yet understood. In this study we tested the relative weighting between haptic and visual signals when they are integrated online into the motor command. We used a new virtual reality setup to desynchronize visual feedback from haptics, which allowed us to probe the relative contribution of haptics and vision in driving participants' movements when they grasped virtual objects simulated by two force-feedback robots. We found that visual delay changed the profile of fingertip force generation and led participants to perceive objects as heavier than when lifts were performed without visual delay. We further modeled the effect of vision on motor output by manipulating the extent to which delayed visual events could bias the force profile, which allowed us to determine the specific weighting the brain assigns to haptics and vision. Our results show for the first time how visuo-haptic integration is processed at discrete sensorimotor events for controlling object-lifting dynamics and further highlight the organization of multisensory signals online for controlling action and perception. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Dexterous hand movements require rapid integration of information from different senses, in particular touch and vision, at different key time points as movement unfolds. The relative weighting between vision and haptics for object manipulation is unknown. We used object lifting in virtual reality to desynchronize visual and haptic feedback and find out their relative weightings. Our findings shed light on how rapid multisensory integration is processed over a series of discrete sensorimotor control points." "Seeing is believing : the effect of video quality on quality of experience in virtual reality" "Aleksandra Zheleva, Wouter Durnez, Klaas Bombeke, Glenn Van Wallendael, Lieven De Marez" "The omnidirectional nature of Virtual Reality (VR) content provides an immersive experience for the viewer. At the same time, VR content relies heavily on the quality of the video to deliver an immersive experience. This study investigates the effect of video quality degradation on aspects of the viewer's quality of experience (QoE) via subjective (i.e., a questionnaire) and objective (i.e., electroencephalogram) methods. We measured the viewer's experience of watching a five-minute-long 6DoF VR movie in four video quality versions. Analysis of the questionnaire data showed that subjective ratings of the video quality decreased in parallel with the degradation of the quality. Also, the lower video quality versions yielded lower sensory immersion and simulator sickness scores. Finally, analysis of the EEG data revealed significantly lower parietal and occipital alpha values for the low video quality versions of the content." "A review on the applications of virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality in surgical simulation: an extension to different kinds of surgery" "Abel J Lungu, Wout SWINKELS, Luc CLAESEN, Puxun Tu, Jan Egger, Xiaojun Chen" "Background: Research proves that the apprenticeship model, which is the gold standard for training surgical residents, is obsolete. For that reason, there is a continuing effort toward the development of high-fidelity surgical simulators to replace the apprenticeship model. Applying Virtual Reality Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) in surgical simulators increases the fidelity, level of immersion and overall experience of these simulators. Areas covered: The objective of this review is to provide a comprehensive overview of the application of VR, AR and MR for distinct surgical disciplines, including maxillofacial surgery and neurosurgery. The current developments in these areas, as well as potential future directions, are discussed. Expert opinion: The key components for incorporating VR into surgical simulators are visual and haptic rendering. These components ensure that the user is completely immersed in the virtual environment and can interact in the same way as in the physical world. The key components for the application of AR and MR into surgical simulators include the tracking system as well as the visual rendering. The advantages of these surgical simulators are the ability to perform user evaluations and increase the training frequency of surgical residents." "Virtual reality tijdens wordzorg als effectieve strategie in het managen van pijn [Dutch; Virtual reality as effective pain management strategy during wound care]" "Bastiaan Van Grootven" "Dreaming of virtual reality and rehabilitation technology in the future: virtual reality, robotics and telerehabilitation" "Guy Vanderstraeten"