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Panel touts 3D eye exams, research
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CHICAGO – A six-member panel of educators, researchers and clinicians shared the latest advances in 3D vision in a continuing education course here at Optometry’s Meeting.
Len Scrogan, MEd, an educational advisor and director of instructional technology for Boulder Valle School District in Colorado, is seeing positive results from a study to evaluate the use of 3D projectors in the classroom.
“We put them into three fourth-grade classrooms, one middle school class, three high school classrooms (advanced placement students) and in a lockdown school,” he told attendees.
The project has run 3 years and has been extended to a fourth year, he said.
“We have found a lot of positive learning benefits,” Mr. Scrogan said. “It’s the power of visualization. There are fewer misconceptions, improved essay writing.
“The recession has hurt the implementation of 3D,” he continued. “I envision a community-based gathering with local ODs and school officials where they community-test the children. I like the notion of statewide screenings.”
Donna Matthews, OD, of Birmingham, Ala., uses 3D images to screen patients’ vision in her practice.
“As far as I know, we’re the only practice who is doing this,” she said.
“We are in a perfect storm of opportunity,” she continued. “We had to fight for therapeutics, Medicare. We’ve got disciplines asking us to help fix their problems. The opportunity is ours for the taking. All we have to do is step up.”
An audience member asked if there is a difference in symptoms depending on how the 3D is presented in terms of active or polarized.
“The answer is yes,” Phillip J. Corriveau, principal engineer at Intel Labs, said. “Each presentation method has its own issues. You can have more problems with maintaining presentation speed. It comes down to source content. If you don’t have good content to begin with, it doesn’t matter. If the content is presented right, it’s really good.”
James Sheedy, OD, PhD, director of the Vision Performance Institute at Pacific University, said, “We have groups of subjects comparing active vs. passive systems. They like the passive system better. It appears bright and deeper in color. They say they’re more comfortable, which translates to absence of symptoms.
“Some aspects of the shutter glasses make it more visually demanding,” he continued. “There’s a bit of a flicker. It’s not quite as bright; the colors aren’t vibrant.”
Dominick Maino, OD, MEd, professor of pediatrics and binocular vision at Illinois College of Optometry, brought a patient to discuss how her visual problems made her physically ill and how vision therapy changed her life.
She experienced dizziness, headaches, words flying out at her when she read, getting sick in 3D movies. She began vision therapy and at the third week noticed her headaches were decreasing, she was tracking better when reading and was not sick as much.
“I can now read in the car. I can watch 3D movies,” she said.
“We can improve quality of life,” Dr. Maino said.
An audience member asked about adding a tagline to anything produced in stereoscopic 3D instructing anyone having difficulty viewing the images to see their eye care provider.
Michael Duenas, OD, chief public health officer for the American Optometric Association, answered: “We’ve been working with the industry and we hope to see those.
“We’ve learned that there are good ways to present information and not-so-good ways,” he continued. “They don’t want someone in a white coat to get up at the beginning of a movie and say something. We’re developing ways to get that message across. It’s a learning process for the industry and for us.”
Mr. Corriveau added, “We tried to figure out how we should do an educational program before adding the tagline. We should have positive press around getting your eyes checked, getting your children’s vision screened, then the taglines will come later. We don’t want the goodness we’re trying to do go away.”
Dr. Duenas said the government is trying to get into more translational research, “research that takes things we know and moves them into clinical applications quicker. There’s a lot of money in the affordable care act for such research. We’re looking at ways to take 3D and apply it in comparative ways and get funding to do that.
“Most of the agencies that schools and colleges of optometry have gone after are National Eye Institute grants,” he continued. “Most of the money for this research is not NEI, it’s AHRQ (Agency for Health Care Research and Quality). The more people who sign up and become part of this, the more research moneys we can garner. We need you for this.”