Video games helping stroke victims?

Over a million victims of stroke require therapy each year to regain normal use of their arms and hands. An important part of this therapy is continued work at home outside of the therapy sessions. It must be simple enough to not make the user overwhelmed and engaging to hold the user’s interest.
Researchers came up with the idea to use video games for this purpose and originally attempted to design their own system to track the user’s movement. It utilized a complex system with two cameras but it was unable to track small wrist and finger movements.
The researchers developing this technology then found that the wii controller could easily work as an off the shelf replacement for their complex motion tracking system. It tracks motion based on an internal accelerometer and a set of fixed infrared targets and an infrared receiver inside the wiimote. The person going through therapy can easily use this at home with a computer to help with their therapy exercises. One example given was using the wiimote to fly though a computer generated landscape like in a flight simulator. This new technology should improve rehabilitation therapy for stroke survivors.