Case Study: Université du Québec achieves rapid, effective virtual-reality phobia treatment with Dassault Systèmes' 3DVIA Virtools

Treating phobias in virtual reality with 3DVIA Virtools and Microsoft

Université du Québec’s Cyberpsychology Lab needed a fast, easy way to create and deploy realistic virtual‑reality treatment scenarios for anxiety disorders and phobias. To meet this challenge they adopted Dassault Systemes’ 3DVIA Virtools (deployed on Microsoft Windows and customized with Visual Studio) for its ease of use, rapid development and cross‑platform VR support.

Using Dassault Systemes’ 3DVIA Virtools the team rapidly built CAVE‑like and head‑mounted display environments that are stable, hardware‑compatible and easy to publish; this speed let researchers produce several new VR scenarios per year and build some applications in under three months. The VR treatments have been used clinically for phobias, Alzheimer’s and addictions with a success rate of about 75%, matching traditional therapies while improving research throughput and clinical deployment.

Université du Québec

Christian Villemaire

Computer Section Team Leader