We’re thrilled to share the results of our years-long clinical trial in using immersive multimedia as an adjunctive measure for managing chronic cancer pain. This journey has been one of dedication, persistence, and teamwork, and today marks a significant milestone. Our goal was to empower people living with and beyond cancer with new tools that suit their needs and we’re proud to present the culmination of our efforts. This achievement wouldn’t have been possible without the collaboration of researchers, clinicians, and participants who shared our vision.

As we release these results, we look forward to the positive impact they may have in supporting further cancer care and chronic pain research. The final journal report has now been published in BMC Digital Health and is available here, and a lay-person summary is provided below.

We would like to formally thank the John & Lotte Hecht Foundation for their support of this work.

• KT – Poster Summary v1.1 
• Final Published Project Paper:

As our clinical trial has wrapped up, we have begun the data analysis process and presented some interim results at the 3rd and 4th Sapporo Conference for Palliative and Supportive Care in Cancer 2023. 

The Sapporo Conference brought about international researchers on the topics of palliative oncology and psycho-oncology. With advances in cancer treatments, the number of patients who continue their daily lives while receiving cancer treatments is increasing. This provides an opportunity for greater collaboration between technology and palliative oncology, particularly in dealing with cancer symptoms and adverse events associated with cancer treatments.

Our research was presented by our Principal Investigator Dr. Bernie Garrett at this conference and can be accessed here.

Full findings of our results will be coming shortly and will be published on the blog once available.

We had the pleasure of attending the Canadian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting in Montreal in May, 2022.

Henry Fu, a PhD student from Simon Fraser University presented our poster titled “Chronic Pain Management in Cancer: An exploratory analysis of electroencephalograph activity during virtual reality pain distraction therapy“.

It was a great opportunity to meet leading industry researchers, health professionals and patient partners. Of particular interest was the session on the new approaches in the treatment of neuropathic pain and current approaches in examining individual differences in pain response using neuro-imaging.

Full book of abstract can be found on the Canadian Pain Society website for those interested.

Our paper on VR-guided meditation and its effects on electroencephalograph (EEG) activity is now published and available to be viewed online at JMIR Biomedical Engineering journal.

A summary of what the purpose of this part of the research was summarized in an earlier blog post.  Thanks again to Dr. Teresa Cheung and Henry Fu from the SFU School of Engineering Sciences for partnering with us on this research.

The link to the paper is here: https://biomedeng.jmir.org/2021/2/e26332

Key Takeaways:

• Findings suggest that distinct altered neurophysiological brain signals are detectable during VR-guided meditation, predominantly in terms of an increase in the power of the β and γ bands.
• Changes in the α and θ bands were also identified, predominantly as a pattern in VR-guided meditation compared with the resting baseline, possibly reflecting the specific impact of visual activity during VR-guided meditation.
• Some changes in coherence were also observed between the frontal and parietal and occipital cortices during VR-guided meditation. No significant association between pain scores and changes in EEG signals was observed.
• Although this is an exploratory study, the results of this work clearly demonstrate the feasibility of EEG recording and subsequent data processing and analysis during VR experiences in patients using modern VR head-mounted displays. 

Please feel free to click the link above and happy reading!

We wanted to provide an update to all blog readers on the progress of our study.

Over the summer, we have finished conducting the analysis for a pilot study on the effect of VR-guided meditation on brain waves using the electroencephalograph (EEG). Our main objective in this sub-study is explore if VR-guided meditation exposure has any specifically identifiable characteristics on the neurological activity in the brain through an EEG scan. We enrolled ten participants who had positive experience as a part of the VR arm of the main clinical trial. Participants undertook an EEG brainwave scan, whilst undertaking a VR experience in their home under the supervision of a trained research assistant.

We partnered with Dr. Teresa Cheung, a physicist and medical imaging scientist, from the Simon Fraser University’s ImageTech lab, for this portion of the study. As this was the first use of EEG recording with patients using VR for pain management, this required the use of novel experimental and analytical approaches, as well as a significant amount of data cleaning and pre-processing prior to analysis, and the use of multiple statistical analytics.

The study data analysis has now concluded and we have finalized a paper for publication in November, 2020. Once this study is published, we will share our findings of the published paper on our blog. We hope you will look forward to reading this paper once it is in the press!