A new binocular approach for treatment of strabismic amblyopia using 3D video games

Abstract

Purpose : We have recently developed a new binocular treatment technique which results in improved visual acuity and stereoacuity in anisometropic amblyopia using stereoscopic 3D video games. The present study was aimed at evaluating a modified version of this treatment protocol for strabismic amblyopia.

Methods : Ten adults with strabismic amblyopia participated in the study. Crowded visual acuity ranged from 20/25-20/125. In the training phase, the participants were required to play 3D first-person shooter video games for a total of 40 hours, 2 hours per session, over 4-6 weeks. For strabismic patients, the misalignment of the two eyes was fully corrected using prism lenses. The fellow sound eye was blurred with Bangerter foils. A 32-inch active 3D television and a pair of liquid crystal shutter glasses were used to display stereoscopic game content with a Sony PlayStation 3 system. We measured a range of visual functions in pre-training and post-training sessions. These visual tasks included visual acuity and stereoacuity.

Results : After 40 hours of 3D video game play, our participants showed improvement in visual acuity, on average ~1 lines (~20%) on a LogMAR letter chart, for both crowded letters and single letters. All participants gained substantial improvements, averaging 33%, in stereoacuity for a range of spatial frequencies (1 to 10 cpd).

Conclusions : Here we show that playing 3D video games can be effective in improving visual acuity. Importantly, unlike monocular video games, 3D video games can also improve stereoacuity in patients with strabismic amblyopia. Our findings suggest that stereoscopic video games might have potential therapeutic value in the recovery of reduced stereopsis in amblyopia, and possibly other neurological disorders.

This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.