Virtual reality for interactive binocular treatment of amblyopia

Abstract

Amblyopia, or ‘lazy eye’, is currently treated by wearing an adhesive patch over the nonamblyopic eye for several hours per day, over a period of many months. Non-compliance with patch wearing is a significant problem. Our multi-displinary team involved clinicians and technologists to investigate the application of VR technology in a novel way. We devised a binocular treatment system in which children watch a video clip of a cartoon on a virtual TV screen, followed by playing an interactive computer game to improve their vision. So far the system has been used to treat 39 children of which 87% have shown some improvement in vision. Vision improvement tended to occur within the first 3-4 treatment sessions. This paper describes research development of the I-BiT™ system. We present a summary of results from clinical case studies conducted to date and discuss the implications of these findings with regard to future treatment of amblyopia.