Testing the efficacy of image enhancement for visual impairment
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Improving visual recognition and mobility with a wearable display
IRAS ID
198017
Contact name
Stephen Hicks
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Oxford
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Summary of Research
Approximately 360,000 people are registered as blind or partially sighted in the UK and many more live with sight loss. The majority of these patients have some form of retinal degeneration such as Age-related Macular Degeneration , Diabetic retinopathy or Retinitis Pigmentosa and sight loss has a major impact on their quality of life. The majority of cases have some residual vision left but this may not be sufficient to perform activities of daily living independently. Even if residual vision can be exploited usefully, this is often limited to situations where lighting is optimal and / or specific aids are used to magnify or increase contrast.
We are developing a visual aid that may be able to make use of this residual vision using image processing techniques to make the visual image optimally visible all the time. By doing so, it hopes to provide more information about the shape, size and distance of elements of the visual scene. The device consists of a set of displays, cameras, and software that is able to process and present images according to different needs. The visual aid aims to create a high-contrast image that allows a visually impaired person to make optimal use of their residual vision.
We would like to study the ability of visually impaired participants to obtain information from our enhanced representations of objects and faces (compared to non-enhanced representations) to investigate whether this is a viable approach for improving visual performance in everyday tasks. We also want to test to what extent participants are able to use the current prototype in everyday settings by taking them home and trying them out for 2 weeks. The data will be used to refine the image processing techniques in order to direct the development of our visual aid.
Summary of Results
Wearable displays and computer vision based image enhancement techniques were shown to improve visual ability in a significant proportion of participants with age-related macular degeneration.
REC name
South Central - Berkshire B Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/SC/0178
Date of REC Opinion
20 Apr 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion