Augmented Reality Glasses Tackle Tunnel Vision

After conducting tests of augmented-reality system on patients with tunnel vision, US researchers have concluded that superimposing computer-generated images over real scenes can considerably improve the way people with visual impairment use their sight.

Usually, people with tunnel vision were using lenses that compressed a wide angle image into the subject’s restricted field of view. However, this technique failed as it was difficult to pick out finer details, and also the objects appeared further away.

Eli Peli, an ophthalmologist and bioengineer at Harvard Medical School in Boston, has invented a device that provides augmented vision. Peli said, “It puts a cartoon on top of a person’s regular view.” The system sketches out and superimposes the wider field of view on to the person’s usual view.

The device consists of glasses fitted with a small camera that passes wide-angle images to a computer, and a transparent display. The computer, about the size of a pack of cigarettes which the viewer wears, makes a wide-angle image with only the ghostly outlines of objects by identifying the edges of objects in a scene and stripping away other details. This processed cartoon-like view is then displayed on the glasses. The image is updated 30 times per second as the viewer moves his/her head and the scene changes.

To review its efficiency, Peli and his colleague Gang Luo asked subjects with the tunnel vision condition to find objects outside of their narrow field of view. They found that most subjects found the objects far more quickly when wearing the new device, and the search time was cut by almost 75%.

The team also found that wearing the device reduced the speed at which people moved their gaze, however, Peli believes that with practice the speed would increase.

Ophthalmologist Henry Greene at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US said, “It’s the only one able to combine electronically produced imagery with normal vision to allow patients to become aware of things they couldn’t before.”

An ophthalmologist at the Wilmer Eye Institute in Baltimore, US, Robert Massof said, “This is probably the cleverest approach out there.”

Both Greene and Massof believe the augmented-vision device can benefit people with other vision problems too. Massof said, “You can tailor it to an individual’s problem.” For instance, people with impaired vision can recognize faces by increasing the contrast of images.

Source: New Scientist