Virtual Reality Shopping Task to Characterize Glaucoma-Related Visual Disability

Researchers have developed virtual reality (VR) simulations to measure vision-related disability among patients with glaucoma and other eye disorders. For example, in a virtual supermarket shopping task, participants were asked to identify 10 shopping items from a rack. This video illustrates the VR performance of a healthy individual (A) and a patient with glaucoma (B) in the task. The patient with glaucoma took 167.5 seconds to complete the task and incorrectly identified 1 item while the healthy individual took 39.7 seconds to correctly identify 10 shopping items without misidentification. The performance suggests that VR simulations can help eye care professionals better understand from patients' perspective how visual impairment impairs them in their daily lives. MD indicates mean deviation; VFI, visual field index. Other simulated tasks involved stair and city navigation during the day and at night. Click the related article link for videos illustrating those simulations and for complete details of the VR project.