KILBRIDE PAUL — Department of Health and Human Services STTR Phase I: N

Description

Given the rapidly aging population and the incidence of age related eye diseases the number of individuals with low vision is expected to increase dramatically in the next decades Patients with central vision loss can no longer use their foveas and eccentric retina must be used to perform visual tasks Since the peripheral retina has reduced sensory capabilities and altered oculomotor behavior performance of everyday visual tasks such as reading are extremely difficult Personal independence self assurance and privacy may be compromised as individuals may have to rely on others to read their personal correspondence Among the most important goals of low vision patients is maintaining gaining reading skills Previously we have developed and validated an effective clinical training program to increase reading speed in individuals with low vision The major innovation of the current project is the development of an in home platform for training eye movement control to improve reading speed in individuals with vision impairment Personal computer technology is currently available to make interfaces accessible to visually impaired people including Intel RealSense D camera touch screens and reliable voice control In addition new eye movement monitoring hardware e g Tobii EyeX is robust and affordable We propose to develop an in home reading eye movement training system Internet connection will provide daily monitoring of training The project has four specific goals In the first month we will develop and refine the hardware of the PC with eye tracking This will include determining aspects of hardware to make it useful in home In the next three months we will develop the software for an accessible in home interface In the next two months we will test the user interface with visually impaired participants and use their feedback to make the system usable for in home training and In the final six months we will conduct proof of concept testing in homes with visual impaired participants to assess usability acceptance and efficacy Statistical methods will allow us to address the following usability two questions Can at least of the visually impaired participants perform at least of the training successfully and does the in home eye movement training significantly improve the reading ability in at least of the subjects that completed the training Maintaining gaining reading skills is among the most important goals of low vision patients Previously we have developed and validated an effective clinical training program to increase reading speed in individuals with low vision The major innovation of this project is to translate this methodology to develop an in home system for training reading eye movement control to improve reading speed in individuals with vision impairment