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Objective Acuity develops vision screening test for children
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New Zealand company Objective Acuity announced that it successfully completed a proof-of-concept trial of a test that screens for reduced vision in children and requires no feedback from the subject.
CEO Adam Podmore said in a press release that the trials involving children 3 to 7 years old and conducted in Dallas, Melbourne and Auckland, “showed high agreement between the Objective Acuity test and the electronic HOTV visual acuity test, which is currently considered the global clinical trials gold standard, but [is] not used in screening.
“To put the results in context,” Podmore continued, “we have compared this to previously published screening results in New Zealand and, using our test, we would have had considerably fewer incorrect referrals to eye specialists.”
Objective Acuity was created by Ben Thompson, PhD, BSc; Jason Turuwhenua, PhD, MSc(Hons); and Mehrdad Sangi, PhD, of the University of Auckland after they identified a lack of effective vision screening tools and high over-referral to eye specialists and, in turn, developed a new technique for measuring vision in children, according to the press release.
Their system uses proprietary moving patterns on a computer screen, coupled with a system designed to record and interpret eye movement, according to the release. The child simply looks at the pattern to complete the test.
“It doesn’t matter what language the children speak, or if they are unable to vocalize what they see,” Podmore said. “Our system removes many of the problems with current vision screening.”