At-home, virtual reality visual field test improves adherence in patients with glaucoma
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NEW ORLEANS — A longer visual field test conducted using at-home virtual reality technology may improve adherence and data accuracy in patients with glaucoma, according to Benjamin T. Backus, PhD, chief science officer at Vivid Vision.
“There’s enough science on cognition and visual neuroscience to know how we should create tests to collect exactly the same data, but with a user interface that isn’t exhausting for patients,” Backus told Healio at Academy ’23. “When it’s not exhausting, they’re willing to collect lots of data. When you have lots of data, you have much higher precision.”
Backus and colleagues enrolled 21 patients from the University of California San Francisco Glaucoma Clinic, who were trained to take an at-home, mobile virtual reality test that uses new psychophysical features to reduce fatigue and cognitive load. Participants performed 20 tests over the course of 5 to 14 days.
The training was successful in 20 participants, who were fully compliant and completed all 10 sessions without prompting.
Backus explained that in creating a bundle of tests, “the data itself tells you which tests are reliable,” eliminating the need for tools like high false-positive rates and other factors to determine whether a test provided reliable data.
“People think that visual field testing is unreliable because patients are doing a subjective task and because different patients are better at doing the task than others. That’s actually not true,” Backus said. “The primary reason why the test is not reliable and why it has such high test-retest variability is the inability to collect enough data during a short test. It’s a mathematical reason that’s causing imprecision in visual field testing.”
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Backus BT, et al. Adherence for a new, 10-session, at-home, virtual reality visual field test in patients with glaucoma. Presented at: Academy; Oct. 11-14, 2023; New Orleans.
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