Virtual reality for interactive binocular treatment of amblyopia

Amblyopia, or ‘lazy eye’, is currently treated by wearing an adhesive patch over the nonamblyopic eye for several hours per day, over a period of many months. Non-compliance with patch wearing is a significant problem. Our multi-displinary team involved clinicians and technologists to investigate the application of VR technology in a novel way. We devised a binocular treatment system in which children watch a video clip of a cartoon on a virtual TV screen, followed by playing an interactive computer game to improve their vision. So far the system has been used to treat 39 children of which 87% have shown some improvement in vision. Vision improvement tended to occur within the first 3-4 treatment sessions. This paper describes research development of the I-BiT™ system. We present a summary of results from clinical case studies conducted to date and discuss the implications of these findings with regard to future treatment of amblyopia.