JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

The growing global burden of visual impairment necessitates better population eye screening for early detection of eye diseases. However, accessibility to testing is often limited and centralised at in-hospital settings. Furthermore, many eye screening programs were disrupted by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, presenting an urgent need for out-of-hospital solutions. This study investigates the performance of a novel remote perimetry application designed in a virtual reality (VR) metaverse environment to enable functional testing in community-based and primary care settings. This was a prospective observational study investigating the performance of a novel remote perimetry solution in comparison with the gold-standard Humphrey Visual Field (HVF) perimeter. Subjects received a comprehensive Ophthalmologic assessment, HVF perimetry and remote perimetry testing. The primary outcome measure was agreement in classification of overall perimetry result normality by the HVF (SITA Fast) and testing with the novel algorithm. Secondary outcome measures included concordance of individual testing points and perimetry topographic maps. 10 subjects were recruited with an average age of 59.6 years (range 28 - 81 years). 7 (70%) subjects were male and 3 (30%) subjects were female. The agreement in classification of overall perimetry result was high (n = 9/10, 90%). The pointwise concordance in automated classification of individual test points was 83.3% + 8.2% (range 75% - 100%). In addition, there was good perimetry topographic concordance with the HVF in all subjects. Remote perimetry in a metaverse environment had good concordance with gold-standard perimetry using the HVF, and could potentially avail functional eye screening in out-of-hospital settings.