Research And Application On Radiotherapy Educational Guidance For Patients Based On Virtual Reality Technology

With the change of people’s living environment and habits,the incidence of cancer is increasing,and radiation therapy has become a main treatment of cancer.However,the concepts related to radiation therapy are relatively abstract and complicated,and patients cannot have an accurate and in-depth understanding of radiation therapy.Due to the lack of awareness of radiotherapy,patients often have anxiety and fear when facing radiotherapy,which affects the implementation of radiation therapy to a certain extent.In order to enhance the understanding of radiotherapy patients for the first time,medical staff would provide radiotherapy education.However,the individual needs of patients vary greatly,and the daily diagnostic workload of medical staff is too heavy to take into account the information of each patient’s needs.At the same time,respiratory movement is also a key factor affecting the accuracy of radiotherapy.Unstable and irregular breathing may cause deviations in radiation and lead to over-irradiation of normal tissue,which will directly affect the efficacy of radiotherapy in severe cases.This study aimed at this background,hoping to help solve problems in clinical practice with the help of virtual reality technology（including mixed reality）.The main contents and conclusions of this study are as follows:Firstly,this study aimed at the research status of educational guidance and virtual reality radiotherapy environment for patients with radiation therapy,through literature research and analysis,combined with clinical field research,to clarify the requirements for educational guidance and training of patients with virtual reality radiotherapy in the actual clinical environment in China.The feasibility of educational guidance for radiotherapy patients based on virtual reality technology was analyzed.Based on virtual reality related technology,audio-visual biofeedback respiratory training method and comprehensive evaluation theory,a treatment educational guidance method for radiotherapy patients based on virtual reality technology was summarized and proposed,which contains the radiotherapy patients educational guidance system based on virtual reality technology framework and research methods.The main processes include:clinical requirements,system design,applied experiments and effect evaluation.Secondly,according to the guidance methods,a radiotherapy guidance system for patients based on virtual reality technology is implemented,which includes the function of demonstration experience of radiotherapy guidance for patients and the function of radiotherapy respiratory intervention training.In order to ensure the normal use of the system function,the system was tested,with emphasis on the accuracy of the system to collect respiratory signals,and the results show that the system has a good matching degree with the phantom input signals in various modes.Thirdly,the psychological intervention experiment was carried out on the tumor patients who received initial radiotherapy by using the system platform set up in this study（the radiotherapy guidance demonstration experience module）.Sixty patients with thoracic tumor were selected and randomized into intervention group and control group.The patients in the control group received routine hospital education,and the intervention group received comprehensive intervention education of virtual reality system.The results showed that the radiotherapy cognitive score of the intervention group patients in pre-and post-intervention increased,the anxiety state score decreased and the mental state VAS score decreased and systolic blood pressure decreased;the radiotherapy cognitive level score of the intervention group was higher than that of the control group（P<0.001）,and the anxiety state score（P=0.001）;most patients were satisfied with the effect of the educational experience of the system and the degree and acceptance are high.Meanwhile,in order to analyze the real intervention effect,Differences-in-Differences（DID）model test was adopted.It has been proved that the virtual reality radiotherapy patient educational guidance can effectively alleviate the psychological anxiety of patients with first-time radiotherapy and improve the patients’cognitive level of radiotherapy.Fourth,the experiment was carried out 25 patients with lung cancer underwent radiotherapy breathing guidance intervention training by using the system platform set up in this study（radiotherapy respiratory intervention training module based on audiovisual biofeedback）.Participants received four breathing methods:free breathing,audio guidance,audiovisual guidance and curve guidance breathing.And the root mean square error（RMSE）of breathing period and amplitude was used as an index to evaluate the stability of breathing.The results showed that audiovisual guidance and curve guidance had lower RMSE than the cycle and amplitude of free breathing compared with the four breathing modes（P<0.05）;The most suitable breathing mode was objectively evaluated by combining qualitative and quantitative indexes of grey correlation analysis,the ranking of the correlation degree of the four breathing modes was f₄>f₃>f₂>f₁.That is,combining real-time visual feedback with voice guidance or curve guidance may improve the reproducibility of key features of breathing mode.S₄curve guidance and S₃ audio-visual guidance were relatively better breathing modes,the respiratory stability of audio-visual guidance and curve guidance is relatively good.This study aimed at the patient educational guidance and training of radiotherapy,based on virtual reality technology combined with the analysis of clinical actual problems and requirements,a set of virtual reality technology-based educational guidance methods for radiotherapy patients were proposed,and a system was implemented,and the practical application effect of the system was evaluated.This study explores new ideas and methods for the application of virtual reality in the educational guidance and training of radiotherapy patients.