Mixed-Reality Platform for Simulation and Synthesis of Multi-Modal Hallucinations with Applications to Schizophrenia Treatment

治疗精神分裂症患者的幻听传统上需要抗精神病药物的多次试验，其中大约三分之一的患者对抗精神病药物治疗具有抗性。一种名为“化身疗法”的替代疗法已经被开发出来，并被证明可以有效地减少与幻听相关的痛苦和无助。 虽然化身疗法显示出巨大的希望，但对于这种治疗的最佳交付要求，还有许多悬而未决的问题。 类似地，如何将化身呈现给患者的许多潜在增强仍有待测试。这些问题和增强的探索需要开发虚拟现实平台，其向治疗师提供容易地调整化身的各种参数的能力。 我们将反复设计、实现和测试这样一个平台，然后将获得的知识应用于适合在治疗师办公室之外使用的平台的增强现实版本。由此产生的智能医疗设备将为患者的日常活动提供治疗益处。

Treating patients with schizophrenia for auditory hallucinations has traditionally required multiple trials of antipsychotic medications with approximately one in three patients being resistant to antipsychotic therapies. An alternative called Avatar Therapy has been developed and shown to effectively reduce the distress and helplessness associated with auditory hallucinations. While Avatar Therapy shows great promise, there are many open questions as to the requirements for optimal delivery of this treatment. Similarly, many potential enhancements to how avatars are rendered to the patient remain to be tested. Exploration of these questions and enhancements requires development of a virtual reality platform that offers to the therapist the ability to easily adjust various parameters of the avatar(s). We will iteratively design, implement, and test such a platform, and then apply the knowledge gained to an augmented reality version of the platform suitable for use outside of the therapist's office. The resulting intelligent medical device will offer the possibility of providing therapeutic benefits to patients in their day-to-day activities.