A Virtual Reality Platform Simulating Visual Impairment for Testing of Electronic Travel Aids and Performing Orientation and Mobility Training

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Diabetic Retinopathy; Visual Impairment; Glaucoma; Age-Related Macular Degeneration
• Interventions: Other: In-House Developed VR Platform - Glaucoma; Other: In-House Developed VR Platform - AMD, DR, Glaucoma

• Registration Number: NCT05135195
• Lead Sponsor: NYU Langone Health

Brief Summary

In this study, the study team utilize virtual reality (VR) to simulate visual impairments of different types and severity in healthy subjects. The platform implements three of the most widespread forms of visual impairment in the United States (US): age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy (DR), and glaucoma, each with three levels of severity, (mild, moderate, and severe). At present, glaucoma is further developed toward a multidimensional visual impairment simulation.

The platform is utilized: i) to provide a safe, controllable, and repeatable set of environments for development and preliminary testing of electronic travel aids (ETAs) in a variety of conditions (i.e., using the ETA to navigate in the immersed environment); and ii) to equip blind and low vision (BVI) professionals, inclusive of orientation and mobility (O\&M) instructors, with a controlled, tunable training platform for skill/capacity building, assessment, and refinement of O\&M techniques, as well as visually impaired trainees with a safe and immersive environment to improve their O\&M skills and learn novel techniques. Two sets of hypothesis-driven experiments are proposed to assess the feasibility of the platform with respect to these two objectives.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Study Start: 2021-10-24
• Study First Submitted: 2021-11-17
• Study First Submitted QC: 2021-11-24
• Study First Posted: 2021-11-26
• Primary Completion: 2022-10-20
• Study Completion: 2022-10-20
• Status Verified: 2023-06
• Last Update Submitted: 2023-06-30
• Last Update Posted: 2023-07-03

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 98

Inclusion Criteria

Not provided

Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Second Set of Experiments	In-House Developed VR Platform - Glaucoma	The anticipated number of participants is 100. Of these, 80 participants have healthy vision, and 20 have glaucoma.
First Set of Experiments	In-House Developed VR Platform - AMD, DR, Glaucoma	The anticipated number of participants is 336. All participants have healthy vision.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Preferred walking speed	1 Day of Intervention
Average time to complete the trial	1 Day of Intervention
Average number of obstacle collisions during the trial	1 Day of Intervention
Average distance traveled by the participant	1 Day of Intervention
Average travel time	1 Day of Intervention
Orientation	1 Day of Intervention	Orientation is measured through the time average of a polarization index, measured as the cosin of the angle between the direction of the instantaneous velocity vector and the straight line linking the instantaneous position of the participant and the following waypoint.
Number of instances in which the participant stop for more than 2 seconds	1 Day of Intervention
Total time spent during stops of more than 2 seconds	1 Day of Intervention
Average time it takes to understand how to interact with the system and run the simulation of the bus ride	1 Day of Intervention

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

NYU Langone Health; 🇺🇸 New York, New York, United States