Biomedical Engineering and Telemedicine Centre, ETSI Telecomunicación, Center for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
Department of Ophthalmology, Hospital Clínico San Carlos, Madrid, Spain.
Eur J Ophthalmol. 2021 Nov;31(6):3080-3086. doi: 10.1177/1120672120976047. Epub 2020 Nov 24.
The aim was to develop and implement a virtual reality tool based on eye-tracking technologies that allow to evaluate the characteristics of the gaze patterns of glaucoma patients in order to have a better understanding of the limitations that these patients experience in their daily life.
This study took place on the Ophthalmology department of Hospital Clínico San Carlos, Madrid, Spain.
In total, 56 participants collaborated in the study. They were divided in two groups, a group composed of 33 glaucoma patients selected by the Ophthalmology department and a control group composed of 23 healthy individuals. Both groups completed two virtual tasks while their gaze was being monitored. The first task, defined as "static" consisted in two exercises based on the observation of images. The second task, defined as "dynamic," consisted in a virtual driving simulator. Number of fixations, fixations duration, saccades amplitude and velocity, fixations/saccades ratio, total execution time, and other specific metrics were measured. These are the total search time for the second exercise of the first task and the number of collisions for the dynamic task. In addition, the dispersion of fixations was also discussed.
For the two exercises of the static task, patients exhibited significative differences in terms of number of fixations ( = 0.012 in free observation exercise), mean saccadic velocity ( = 0.023 and 0.017), fixations/saccades ratio ( = 0.035 and 0.04), and also the search and total execution times of the visual search exercise ( = 0.004 and 0.027, respectively). For the dynamic task, significative differences were found on average saccades amplitude ( = 0.02), average saccades velocity ( = 0.03), and the number of collisions ( = 0.02).
The results show that eye-tracking technologies can be used as a tool for evaluating the gaze patterns of glaucoma patients and differentiate them of healthy individuals. However, further studies with a larger cohort of participants and additional tasks are needed.
开发并实施一种基于眼动追踪技术的虚拟现实工具，以评估青光眼患者的注视模式特征，从而更好地理解这些患者在日常生活中所面临的限制。
本研究在西班牙马德里的圣卡洛斯临床医院眼科进行。
共有 56 名参与者参与了这项研究。他们被分为两组，一组是由眼科选择的 33 名青光眼患者组成的实验组，另一组是由 23 名健康个体组成的对照组。两组在监测其注视的情况下完成了两个虚拟任务。第一个任务被定义为“静态”，由两项基于图像观察的练习组成。第二个任务被定义为“动态”，由一个虚拟驾驶模拟器组成。测量了注视次数、注视持续时间、眼跳幅度和速度、注视/眼跳比、总执行时间以及其他特定指标。这些指标包括第一个任务的第二个练习的总搜索时间和动态任务的碰撞次数。此外，还讨论了注视的离散度。
对于静态任务的两个练习，患者在注视次数（自由观察练习中=0.012）、平均眼跳速度（0.023 和 0.017）、注视/眼跳比（0.035 和 0.04）以及视觉搜索练习的搜索和总执行时间（分别为=0.004 和 0.027）方面存在显著差异。对于动态任务，在平均眼跳幅度（=0.02）、平均眼跳速度（=0.03）和碰撞次数（=0.02）方面也存在显著差异。
研究结果表明，眼动追踪技术可以作为评估青光眼患者注视模式的工具，并将其与健康个体区分开来。然而，还需要进一步的研究，以更大的参与者群体和更多的任务来验证结果。
