Chronic Pain and 3D Technologies

Chronic Pain and 3D Technologies

    During the extent of my research, two main topics were of great interest to me: movement through the lens of technologies and chronic pain. Although my aims and focus points have shifted throughout my investigation, now I came to a point of combining them by expressing chronic pain through technology. I mostly was inspired by my own journey and relationship with pain which deeply affected an element of life in which I find the most joy and interest - movement. I have observed and documented how the felt pain influenced and changed my ability and pattern of various settings of movement. I have researched and worked mostly on the physical side of pain, but there is the undeniable psychological effect that sometimes can be hard to cope with. Pain can become a very isolating and deeply personal experience that others find hard to relate to. There often is a metaphorical wall between the sufferer and others due to the lack of understanding of how living with persistent chronic pain can feel. Since most of the time it is an invisible condition it becomes hard to empathise with a person that is in pain and for the sufferer to express their feelings. The relationship between chronic pain and loneliness has been often discussed in the research area of the medical field. In his paper, Dr. Toby Smith (2017) has stated that "by raising awareness of social isolation and loneliness in this population, people with chronic musculoskeletal pain may be better supported to reduce the negative impact that social isolation and loneliness can have on their health and well-being", which suggests that lessening social isolation could help people suffering from chronic pain.

I have looked into the current technologies and development projects that research how 3D models, mobile apps, and VR experiences could benefit the treatment of chronic pain. One of the organisations investigating such work is an American-based company, RelieVRx (formerly EaseVRx), which has been developing many different VR experiences and environments to help with pain caused by a variety of reasons from labor pain to cancer treatment. Recently, the company has introduced and studied home use virtual reality intervention for the management of chronic pain. It works in a way that a person who suffers from chronic pain could use a VR headset in their own home with the ability to experience many different cognitive-behavioral therapy-based settings such as playing games, watching different sceneries, or swimming with the dolphins, as well as to "interact within the context of that environment to learn various information such as the role of pain in the brain, how pain exists in the central nervous system, and what can be done to soothe or calm one’s nervous system within the context of pain”, described Beth Darnall, a PhD and a co-creator of the RelieVRx, when interviewd by Elizabeth Pratt for the Healthline (2021). The findings of the research that applied the mentioned technology to 97 participants suffering from low back pain or fibromyalgia were successful with reported significant reduction of pain which suggests that "VR has the potential to provide enhanced treatment and greater improvement across a range of pain outcomes" (Darnall et al., 2020). Besides the cognitive therapy-based research using VR, there have been studies examining and creating solutions for better visualisation and communication of chronic pain which helps with the previously discussed lack of understanding that people suffering from chronic pain experience. Such example would be an app called  GeoPain, created by a startup MoxyTech, that uses 3D animation, to track chronic pain. In the app, the user is able to log the frequency and severity of pain, as well as other factors that could influence it such as sleep or consumed alcohol, which allows a better understanding of the trajectory that the symptoms are taking. There is also a function of 3D mapping of the pain on a model of their body. “For the patient, this translates into a comprehensive visual record of their pain journey" which "helps them communicate to their care provider(s) in a consistent and complete way", explained the co-founder of the company Eric Maslowski, when interviewed by Jared Kaltwasser for the Chief Health Care Executive (2018). The free app will be available for use by patients, medical professionals, and pharmacies, which could help with the feelings of misunderstanding and the lack of ways in which one could identify and communicate their chronic pain.

Reflecting on my personal experience, I believe that If chronic pain could be more effectively expressed by the sufferers and understood by others, there would be greater communication between people which could lead to chronic pain feeling less of an isolating and lonely experience which overall could benefit the treatment and the management of it. That is why I began researching ways of combining movement and technologies to create an immersive experience where I could express how living with chronic pain feels to me, which is perhaps a more powerful and connective way than a spoken word. I do understand that I might not be able to achieve this with my current knowledge and accessibility to technology, yet I will try to create an experience that would give another layer of understanding of chronic pain to the viewer.

My idea for the discussed project is to create 2 to 3 short film-like 3D videos that would immerse the viewer into my personal experience of chronic pain. I decided that I will create the first video in a way that it could be viewed using the technologies of VR. Since the Tethered virtual reality headsets are out of my reach financially, I will try to export the file in a way that a Smartphone VR headset would still work. If this ambition fails, I will screen the video on a TV monitor, which will may not be as intimate of an experience as desired, but still a powerful one. During my research, I read a paper called Living With Persistent Pain (The Pain Clinic and The Positive Living Support Group, 2006), where the experience of chronic pain was described as "unpredictable, confusing and uncontrollable". These words have deeply resonated with me, as they accurately described how I felt about my pain during the past 3 years. That is why I used them as my inspiration point for the feeling that the audience should get when interacting with my first video. To create it, I am planning to use motion capture, a 3D character, and a 3D environment. I will discuss my creative process in the following log.

Bibliography

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