Evaluation of Effect of Visually-Induced Motion Sickness Using Photoplethysmography

Abstract

A human watching moving images displayed on a wide-field display or screen sometimes suffers from the visually-induced motion sickness (VIMS)that induces symptoms related to the autonomic nervous system such as nausea, vomiting, and dizziness. Previous studies indicated that the maximum cross-correlation coefficient (ρmax) between blood pressure and heart rate, whose frequency components are limited to the neighborhood of O.1Hz, is a useful index to evaluate the effects of the VIMS on humans. The present study proposed a new method for obtaining Amax without measurement of neither continuous blood pressure nor ECG but using only finger photoplethysmography. The proposed method was evaluated on the basis of comparison with the conventional method carrying out an experiment in which multiple subjects were simultaneously watching the same swaying video image. The experimental result showed that the proposed method worked as successfully as the conventional method.