Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Jul 19, 2022
Date Accepted: Jan 20, 2023
Research Status and Emerging Trends in Virtual Reality Rehabilitation: A Bibliometric and Knowledge Graph Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Virtual reality (VR) technology has been widely used in rehabilitation training because of its immersive, interactive, and imaginative features. A comprehensive bibliometric review is required to help researchers focus on future directions based on the new definitions of VR technologies in rehabilitation, which reveal new situations and requirements.
Objective:
Herein, we aimed to summarize the effective research methods and potential innovative approaches to VR rehabilitation by evaluating publications from various countries to encourage research on efficient strategies to improve VR rehabilitation.
Methods:
The SCIE database was searched on Jan 20, 2022 for publications related to the application of VR technology in rehabilitation research. We found 1,617 papers and we created a clustered network from 46,116 references cited in the manuscripts. CiteSpace V and VOSviewer were used to identify countries, institutions, journals, keywords, co-cited references, and research hotspots.
Results:
Among these, 63 countries and 1,921 institutes had contributed publications, the United States of America has taken the leading position in this field and has the highest publication number, h-index and collaborative network with other countries. The reference clusters of SCIE papers were divided into nine categories: kinematics, neurorehabilitation, brain injury, exergame, aging, motor rehabilitation, mobility, cerebral palsy, and exercise intensity. The research frontiers were represented by the key words: video games (2017–2021), and young adults (2018–2021).
Conclusions:
Our study comprehensively assesses the current research states of VR rehabilitation and analyzes the current research hotspots and future trends in the field, with the aim of providing resources for more intensive investigation and encouraging more researchers to further develop VR rehabilitation.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.