Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Serious Games
Date Submitted: Aug 31, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Sep 3, 2024 - Oct 29, 2024
Date Accepted: Mar 13, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Research Hotspots and Trends of Virtual Reality Intervention for Stroke: A Bibliometric Analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Virtual reality (VR) is a rapidly developing technology that has gained significant traction in the medical domain, particularly in the treatment and rehabilitation of individuals with stroke. The growing use of VR in stroke management has led to a notable increase in clinical investigations.
Objective:
The aim of this study is to present a bibliometric analysis of VR for stroke studies to identify prevailing research trends and guide future scientific research.
Methods:
Articles and reviews on the topic of virtual reality for stroke were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded of Web of Science Core Collection database. The data related to publications, countries, institutions, authors, journals, citations, and keywords in the studies were systematically analyzed using VOSviewer 1.6.20 and Citespace 6.3.1 software.
Results:
A total of 1171 papers on the topic of VR for stroke between 1999 and 2023 were analyzed and visualized to identify research hotspots and trends in the field. The number of annual publications in this field of study has increased gradually over the past 20 years, with the number of annual publications peaking in 2022 (n=154). In terms of publications and total citations, countries, institutions, and authors from North America and Western Europe were found to make significant contributions to the field. The current hotspot is concentrated on evaluating the effectiveness of VR for improving upper limb and balance functions in stroke patients. The keyword analysis indicates that the latest research is oriented to investigate the effectiveness of VR in combination with rehabilitation techniques such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy for the treatment of stroke, and the advancements in VR technology are increasingly gaining focus.
Conclusions:
Our study offers insights into the current hotspots and emerging trends of VR in the treatment of stroke. These findings may serve as a guide for future research and the application of VR for stroke.
Citation
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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.