Virtual reality game that reads body signals will ease pain for child cancer patients

Researchers have developed a new game that combines artificial intelligence and virtual reality to help ease the pain for children undergoing medical treatments.

Virtual reality games could provide a new type of distraction therapy that may help young patients cope better with pain.

Developed by University of Malta researchers, the game illustrates an island populated by animals and allows players to engage and focus on the colourful and magical landscape.

Players’ physiological data is monitored in real time and artificial intelligence is used to detect heart rate and other body signals to infer a patients’ state and adjust the game accordingly. If AI notices that the player is not engaged enough, the game will introduce entertaining challenges.

The technology has been developed as part of the MORPHEUS project led by Prof. Alexiei Dingli and Luca Bondin from the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Malta. The game has been developed in collaboration with Fabrizio Cali as lead designer, and supervised by Prof. Vince Briffa from the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Science.

MORPHEUS is a project of the University of Malta funded by Epic For Good Foundation.

The game will be rolled out for child cancer patients at the Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre in Malta and at a later date available for the public.