NEUROFIELDZ INC. — Department of Health and Human Services STTR Phase I: NEI

Description

Amblyopia is the most common cause of monocular visual impairment in children and young adultsaffectingpeopleAmblyopia is generally treated with patching or atropine therapyhowever these treatments are not effective in adults and up to half of juvenile casesoften because of poor complianceand cannot easily be personalized during therapyThese factors have led to recent interest in customized game based binocular therapies that are administered inD entertainment systemsTypically functional endpoints are assessed with behavioral tasks that must be learned by the patient and interrupt the delivery of therapyNeuroFieldz and Northeastern University have developed a new product NeuroDotVR combining a wireless NeuroDot sensor to measure Visual Evoked Potentials and FieldsVEPFwith a Virtual Reality headset powered by a smartphone to generate visual stimuliIn this Phase I STTR projectwe propose to use the NeuroDotVR product with Swept Contrast VEPFSC VEPFas an objectivenon invasive endpoint to measure treatment responseSC VEPF stimuli will be embedded within the therapeutic stimuli without requiring the patient to perform any task and enabling uninterrupted delivery of therapyThe project aims areSpecific AimMeasurement of the Contrast Sensitivity Function with the SC VEPF We will measure the SC VEPF in the impaired and fellow eyes ofamblyopic adults andamblyopic children by recording the VEPF amplitudes to filtered noise stimuli as a function of contrastNoise stimuli will be presented independently to each eye using the SC VEPF systemWe will systematically vary the peak spatial frequency of the noise stimuliorcycles per degreeand contrastand vary the temporal frequency fromtoHzand measure VEPF amplitude to estimate the contrast sensitivity function of each eyeWe hypothesize that compared to the fellow eyethe amblyopic eye will have attenuated VEPF amplitudesespecially at high spatial frequenciesand that the magnitude of the inter ocular difference will vary with temporal frequencySpecific AimDiagnostic SC VEPF Embedded within Therapeutic Stimuli To minimize interruption of therapywe propose to embed the diagnostic filtered noise stimulitocycles per degreewithin the therapeutic stimuliHollywood movies with broad spatio temporal spectrumTo reduce contamination between the diagnostic and therapeutic stimulithe therapeutic stimuli will be digitally notch filtered with a spatio temporal filter that removes all spatial and temporal frequencies within one octave of the test spatio temporal frequencySC VEPF will be measured in the impaired and fellow eye ofamblyopic adults andamblyopic children and behavioral estimates of contrast sensitivity will be collected with the same stimuliWe hypothesize that patients will not object to the diagnostic noise embedded in the therapy stimuli and that compared to the fellow eyethe amblyopic eye will have attenuated VEPF amplitudes and behaviorally estimated contrast sensitivityespecially at high spatial frequencies Project TitleTheranostic Virtual Reality Headset for AmblyopiaAmblyopia is an eye disorder that affects approximatelyM in the USThis project will develop a virtual reality headset that administers visual therapies and simultaneously evaluates response to treatment by measuring visual evoked potentialsIf successfulthe system will provide a new rapidconvenient method providing quantitative endpoints monitoring response to newly developed treatments