Rebalancing the visual system of people with amblyopia "lazy eye" by using HMD and image enhancement

Abstract

Amblyopia or "lazy eye" occurs when during early childhood visual information from one eye is absent or poorly transmitted to the brain. This visual deprivation causes poor vision and the eye gradually becomes weaker (amblyope) relative to the other eye which becomes stronger. The visual imbalance is caused by the brain's preference for the strong eye. To restore vision, conventional treatments use occlusion and vision penalization of the strong eye to force the brain to use the amblyope eye. Conventional treatments are regarded as effective in young children but impractical in older subjects and patient compliance remains the main cause of treatment failure. This presentation describes our preliminary efforts to develop a convenient and viable binocular head mounted display (HMD) interface. The goal is to rebalance the vision by using a simultaneous enhancing/attenuation image adjustment. The image presented to the normal eye will be attenuated while the image presented to the amblyope eye will be enhanced. During this operation the user will be engage in recreational activities such as watching movies, using internet or playing video games. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.