The Use of Eye Tracking in the Management of Neurodegenerative Disease
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The value of eye tracking in the management of different types of neurodegenerative disease
IRAS ID
325200
Contact name
Denize Atan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Bristol
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 3 months, 18 days
Research summary
Eye tracking is essentially a non-invasive method to record eye movements and measure the characteristics of the eye movements. Subjects are asked to look at static and moving targets on a computer screen while their eye movements are recorded by a remote infrared camera and the eye tracking software calculates the speed and accuracy of their eye movements. Therefore, eye tracking has the potential to be more objective, sensitive, and reproducible in the detection of eye movement abnormalities, changes in their characteristics over time, and their response to treatment than clinical observation alone.
Several different areas of the brain are involved in the initiation and control of eye movements. Therefore, people affected by neurodegenerative disorders of the brain, like dementia, often develop eye movement abnormalities.
The aims of this pilot project are to assess the feasibility and acceptability of eye movement recordings in people affected by neurodegenerative diseases attending an outpatient clinic at Bristol Eye Hospital (BEH) and the sensitivity and specificity of eye tracking compared with standard clinical observation to detect eye movement abnormalities associated with different types of neurodegenerative diseases. People affected by a range of neurodegenerative diseases will be recruited from neurology clinics at the two main hospitals in Bristol (Bristol Royal Infirmary, Southmead Hospital). Healthy subjects of similar age and sex will be recruited from people attending BEH who do not have any type of neurological disease and can comfortably see the targets on the computer screen.
This information collected from this pilot study will help us to decide how many patients and healthy control subjects we would need to recruit to larger research studies in which eye tracking is used to assess disease progression or response to novel medical and surgical treatments.
REC name
South East Scotland REC 01
REC reference
23/SS/0079
Date of REC Opinion
1 Aug 2023
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion