Biomedical subjects

Beatriz Rey

Publications and source records attributed to Beatriz Rey.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

New technologies for providing remote psychological treatments.

New technologies lead us to a series of new applications that we could not imagine just a few years before. Many services have appeared for Internet, the global computer network: FTP, e-mail, World Wide Web. Psychological treatments are one of the multiple applications that can be developed using these tools. Dynamic web pages that include information prepared by the therapist for different patients and that receive information from them can be generated. Other tools such as e-mail or chats can be used to provide a direct communication. Databases can be integrated in web applications for storing data about different patients. Several formats can be used for storing the information, and some of them such as XML provide a promising method of psychological data standardization. Using different development tools, virtual environments can also be generated and integrated in web pages, so new psychological treatments such as virtual environment exposure are also possible from web applications. This entire basis provides the structure that allows that new applications can be imagined and developed. In a few years, new trends will appear, probably one of them will be the use of wireless devices to provide psychological treatment and help at any place and any time.

Internet↗

PubMed2004

Technological background of VR.

User interface (UI) design is a critical component of any virtual environment (VE) application, and especially for VE applied to medicine. User interfaces for VE are becoming more diverse. Mice, keyboards, windows, menus, and icons--the standard parts of traditional WIMP interfaces--are still prevalent, but nontraditional devices and interface components are proliferating rapidly. These include spatial input devices such as trackers, 3-D pointing devices, and whole-hand devices allowing gestural input. Three-dimensional, multisensory output technologies--such as stereoscopic projection displays, head-mounted displays (HMDs), spatial audio systems, and haptic devices--are also becoming more common. In this chapter we present a brief overview of 3-D interaction and user interfaces technologies for VE.

Computer Systems↗

PubMed2003

Internet-based telehealth system for the treatment of agoraphobia.

In this work that is being validated within the VEPSY project, we present a system that allows the patient to continue a psychological virtual reality treatment from his or her home PC as complementary therapy. In the consulting room, we have been using virtual therapy for panic disorder and agoraphobia treatment to expose the patient to several situations. For the complementary therapy, a structured treatment via the Internet has been prepared, which consists of several parts: an assessment protocol; a structured treatment protocol organized in several blocks (such as psychoeducation and exposure); and an outcome protocol. The same situations as in the consulting room have been selected for the exposure, but each of them has been divided into several virtual environments with specific characteristics that limit its difficulty level. The stimuli that are used at each level are controlled automatically by the system. The information of the patient is stored in a database, which is placed in a remote server using XML format and used to control which stages of the treatment he or she can access. The psychologist can limit the evolution of the patient. The virtual environments are installed in the patient's PC, and they are implemented with a mechanism that ensures that they can only be run when the patient connects to the web. The user should not have any special virtual reality hardware at home, so head rotations have been simulated with the navigation system.

Agoraphobia↗