Abstract:

Eye examination is an important procedure that allows diagnosing conditions such as blindness, eye diseases, and signs of tumors in addition to various anomalies of the brain. Proper eye diagnosis can help identify early eye conditions that may compromise the sight. The examination comprises an analysis of the eye’s physiology accompanied with functional tests to determine visual acuity and functionality amongst many others. The most cost-effective tool for performing the eye examination is the ophthalmoscope, which is widely available. However, modern diagnostic tools include devices such as computerized auto-refractors, corneal topography, digital fundus camera, tonometers, and ocular coherence tomographer, amongst many others. All this equipment, requires specialized facilities, training and associated costs that make them unavailable in various scenarios. Eye examination training presents challenges involving the understanding of the procedure, the operation of the equipment, and ultimately the diagnosis. However, the diagnosis is especially challenging when using the ophthalmoscope as the eye fundus is observed as a flat two-dimensional image making it difficult to observe and identify physiological changes due to inflammatory conditions that may compromise the eye. To provide suitable training tools independent from patient availability, medical simulation devices can offer customizable scenarios presenting various diseases that the learner can explore. Eye examination tools include multimedia, virtual reality, and manikin simulators that allow observing an eye fundus to diagnose a condition. The level of interactions and immersion varies amongst each solution, some focusing on 2D/3D animations and visualizations, and others on realistic interactions with interchangeable eye fundus pictures or computer generated models using customized ophthalmoscopes. However, access to such equipment can be restrictive and given the one-on-one patient/physician interactions that take place in an eye examination; having multiple students present during training is not possible. Current eye examination simulators provide an external view where the instructor can observe and guide the learner properly, in contrast to the traditional method where the learner had to be guided through descriptions.

Our previous works have focused on the development of multimodal eye examination tools involving haptics, stereoscopic augmented reality, and room-scale virtual reality approaches. In this work, we present the development of an augmented reality app to convert a mobile phone into an ophthalmoscope as a complementary tool to practice eye examination in a controlled and portable manner. Our early explorations with content experts provide us grounds to further continue our development given the educational potential of taking advantage of hardware that it is common to most learners, the smartphone.