OCULAR BIOMETRY IN VISION SCREENING

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The ultimate objective is to develop products for vision-screening/diagnosis of preschool children. WaveTec Vision Systems has developed combined wavefront-sensing and eye-tracking technology for unobtrusively and dynamically measuring binocular line-of-sight and refraction, including sphere, cylinder, and axis. Realtime eye tracking is also used to assess fixation and attention. With a binocular open view and targets at different distances, the technology measures vergence and accommodation along with standard vision screening parameters. Automated algorithms process pupil images and make a final vision screening decision with no expert viewer required. Within Phase I, Wavetec demonstrated the technology's feasibility for vision screening via mathematical simulation/analysis, engineering trials on prototypes using artificial eyes and automated computer processing, and successful demonstrations on humans. This Product Development grant will design and build two product prototypes; gather feasibility data on adults and preschool children; and use these data to develop robust algorithms for objective vision screening. This is not clinical research or evaluation per se. The data are necessary for the prototype development. The end goal of Phase II is to objectively/subjectively demonstrate product feasibility in terms of ease-of-use, ability of preschool children to comply with the simple task, accuracy of the refraction/alignment measurements, effectiveness of the automated analysis, and reasonable manufacturing cost estimates.