Pain assessment with interactive computer animation.

A method of assessing pain using interactive computer animation is described. This method provides quantitative measurements of different qualitative aspects of pain experience without reliance on fine verbal distinctions. A clinical comparison of this procedure and the Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) is reported. Correlations between paper and animated visual analogue scales (VAS) showed that animated measurements can be reliably compared to traditional paper-based reporting. Measurements using animations designed to assess different qualities of pain experience correlated significantly with SF-MPQ measures, providing good concurrent validity. A difference was found between patients who chose only one quality-of-pain animation and those who chose more than one, possibly indicating a difference in patients' verbal fluency. Patients overwhelmingly preferred the interactive animations to the paper-based method.