Feasibility of the Meta Quest 3 for upper limb kinematic analysis: accuracy, consistency, agreement and reliability.

All 39 participants were healthy adults with no upper limb problems. How well the headset tracks a weak, spastic or tremor-affected arm is unknown, and the authors say this still has to be tested in clinical populations. Only the wrist of the dominant hand was tracked. The headset does not give joint angles or trunk movement, so it cannot stand in for a full kinematic assessment, and left-handed patients were not studied. Participants wore the headset while moving, which may have changed how naturally they moved compared with moving without it. Only five simple seated tasks were used, so the results may not carry over to other movements or to everyday activity. Small sample from a single laboratory, and the volunteers were staff and acquaintances of the researchers rather than a representative group. Results depended heavily on which task and which measure was studied. Number of movement units was unreliable in both systems, and the vertical point-reaching task performed worst throughout.

Three public research funders are named: the Conselleria d'Educacio, Investigacio, Cultura i Esport, the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion, and the Conselleria de Innovacio, Universitats, Ciencia i Societat Digital of the Generalitat Valenciana. The text supplied does not report any funding or involvement by Meta or any other maker of the headset, and does not list any competing interests.

Do not read this as proof the headset can now measure your patients. Every participant was a healthy adult with no upper limb problem, so the study says nothing about tracking a weak or spastic arm, and the authors say clinical populations still have to be tested. Do not assume every measure is usable either. Number of movement units varied so much between repeats that the authors say it cannot be trusted to detect change.