"Quantitative tests for binocular vision"
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Quantifying binocular combination in children and adults: a comparison between common and novel tests for binocular vision
IRAS ID
222864
Contact name
Annegret Dahlmann-Noor
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 2 months, 16 days
Research summary
Amblyopia is the most common visual problem in children, manifesting as a reduced vision (acuity) in one eye and a series of other functional deficits, such as poor binocular vision. If glasses prescription remains different across eyes after a period of wearing the appropriate correction, traditional treatments consist in occluding (e.g. by patching) the fellow-dominant eye (FE) to force the usage of the weak-amblyopic-eye (AE). Among other alternative treatments for amblyopia, we explored a home-based therapy, using modified TV content and 3D shutter glasses to filter what each eye saw: a clear image was visible through the AE, while a blurred image was visible through the FE (personalized level of blur, set at induction to match acuity in the AE). We adopted a novel simple game (interleaved to movies) to monitor if, with time, this controlled-viewing condition lead daily scenes (non-controlled viewing) to be equally visible through either eye. To answer, we measured the change in eye-dominance pre- vs. post-treatment.
Here, we propose to compare our game-test to existing clinical and behavioral measures for binocularity. This is important not just to validate the test we used, but in particular: a) to overcome the current lack of objective, reliable tests of quantifying eye-dominance in the clinic and b) to offer practical guidelines for alternative methods. We propose to test children (as in our exploratory study) and adults, both with and without amblyopia. This will allow us to improve the understanding of the functional importance of eye-dominance and how, at different ages, it relates to normal and amblyopic vision. Possibly, this will improve treatment for amblyopia, by providing an efficient set of tests to facilitate screening and to monitor and train patients’ vision.
REC name
London - Chelsea Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/LO/0938
Date of REC Opinion
8 Jun 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion