Virtual reality vision testing
If there’s one thing patients with glaucoma dread, often as much as the daily eye drops they must use multiple times a day, it’s visual field testing that is both cumbersome and time consuming.
Patients with glaucoma must be monitored up to three times a year by visual field tests that map out their side vision, the part of vision that is affected by glaucoma.
Currently, the patient sits in a room equipped with a large machine. The test requires the patient to look into the machine while their head is cradled in a bowl-shaped crater within the device. Without moving the head, the patient is instructed to tap a button when a flash of light is detected — the lights vary in intensity and appear in all quadrants of the visual field. The test measures how much can be seen to each side while the eyes are focused on a central point.
Sylvia Groth, MD, associate professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, is studying an alternative that uses virtual reality (VR) perimetry for visual field testing.
Groth and Alberto Gonzalez-Garcia, MD, founder of Olleyes, have worked together on a new visual field glaucoma testing system using his technology, with Groth providing clinical insight. The result is an immersive VR-based system, VisuALL, that Groth says performs visual field testing in a more comfortable, versatile and portable way. The lightweight VR test is a wearable, portable goggle-like device with a Bluetooth-connected handpiece to control on-screen functions. It permits head movement.
“Currently, visual field testing is a burdensome and uncomfortable test,” Groth said. “We are trying to figure out if there’s a better way to monitor these glaucoma patients, perhaps from home. Thinking about the patient experience, the worst part for a patient with glaucoma and their ongoing clinical management is the visual field test. Trying to offer it in a way that’s a little bit less burdensome is my mission. The idea is if you can be in a more comfortable location, like your home, we will have the ability to do the test more frequently and to monitor these patients more closely because we aren’t just tied to one machine.”
VEI will enroll 100 patients into this study.