Abstract: Objective: With the global aging population and to meet the growing cognitive rehabilitation needs of elderly cancer patients, this preliminary study aimed to design and develop a cognitive rehabilitation system based on Virtual Reality (VR) technology for screening elderly cancer patients' mild dementia and an immersive reminiscence therapy system. Methods: The system includes VR cognitive assessment and cognitive rehabilitation, VR cognitive assessment includes two modules of cancer-related cognitive impairment assessment and mild dementia screening assessment; and VR rehabilitation includes the general cognitive rehabilitation module and the module of immersive reminiscence therapy. Results: Preliminary applications were conducted among 37 subjects to test the feasibility and safety of the system. By Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, this study identified a total VR cognitive test score of 9.5 as threshold for discriminating older adults with mild dementia or not. There were no adverse events related to the VR cognitive assessment and intervention. Conclusion: It can be seen that it is feasible and safe to apply VR technology to the assessment of elderly cancer patients with mild dementia, but the effectiveness of VR mild dementia assessment and immersive reminiscence therapy still needs to be examined among elderly cancer patients.

Key words: Virtual Reality; elderly cancer patients; cognitive assessment; mild dementia; immersive reminiscence therapy; cognitive rehabilitation