Estimation of Anxiety Level using Physiological Measures to VR Exposure Therapy System

Abstract

Exposure therapy is a treatment for anxiety disorder patients. Starting with a weak stimulus might cause the symptoms return, while starting with a strong stimulus is effective but the patients come to hate the treatment. Therefore, we proposed a system that introduces VR and estimates patients' anxiety level to keep it at an appropriate level by controlling the content of VR. Firstly, we developed a method to estimate the anxiety level using physiological measures. Eight healthy male adults who gave written informed consent participated in the experiment. They were given a simulated interview in VR space presented by HMD and required to rate anxiety. Principle component analysis was applied to various sets of physiological measures and the set that showed the best explained valiance rate was selected. The possibility was suggested that its first component which can be interpreted as sympathetic activation can be used for anxiety estimation.