Diplopia: A virtual reality game designed to help amblyopics

Abstract

Virtual reality has the potential to measure and help many vision problems. More than 3% of the population have amblyopia, commonly known as lazy eye, a weakness and impairment of vision in one or both of the eyes [1]. Amblyopia often results in a suppression of the information coming from the bad eye, and a loss of stereoscopic vision as a result. It was long thought that people with amblyopia could not improve the vision in their bad eye or gain stereoscopic vision after a critical age of 10-12 years old. Recent research indicates the adult brain is more plastic with regards to suppressiion than previously thought. [2]. Inspired by this, we have built a virtual reality game, called Diplopia, using Unity3D which utilizes the Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD) and the Leap Motion controller to help people with amblyopia restore vision in their amblyopic eye.