Objective: To establish the areas of research focus in the application of VR in rehabilitation medicine, analyze its themes and trends, and offer a reference for future related research in this field.
Methods: This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the development process, areas of research focus, and research trends in the field of the application of VR in rehabilitation medicine, using the Web of Science core dataset as the source and using a bibliometric analysis with CiteSpace.
Results: The application of VR in rehabilitation medicine was composed of three stages, and the research topics were reviewed from five perspectives: neurological rehabilitation, psychological treatment, pain distraction, cardiopulmonary rehabilitation, and visual-spatial disorder.