• The Journal of Information Technology
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.45-55
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• 2002

Virtual Reality(VR) is a new technology which makes humans communicate with computer. It allows the user to see, hear, feel and interact in a three-dimensional virtual world created graphically. In this paper, we introduced VR into psychotherapy area and developed VR system for the exposure therapy of acrophobia. Acrophobia is an abnormal fear of heights. Medications or cognitive-behavior methods have been mainly used as a treatment. Lately the virtual reality technology has been applied to that kind of anxiety disorders. A virtual environment provides patient with stimuli which arouses phobia, and exposing to that environment makes him having ability to over come the fear. In this study, the elevator stimulator that composed with a position sensor, head mount display, and audio system, is suggested. To illustrate the physiological difference between a person who has a feel of phobia and without phobia, heart rate was measured during experiment. And also measured a person's HR after the virtual reality training. In this study, we demonstrated the subjective effectiveness of virtual reality psychotherapy through the clinical experiment.