Assessment of functional vision for visually impaired people in virtual and mixed reality: from psychophysics to ecological environments

Niveau : Doctorat

Période : 2024-2027

Visual impairment is a major public health issue, due to its impact on the quality of life of visually
impaired people of all ages, and the problems associated with medical and social care. As visual
impairments are particularly heterogeneous, they can affect all visual functions as well as functional
tasks in different ways. Despite the availability of a large number of ophthalmological measures and
standardized quality-of-life questionnaires, there is a lack of tools for quantitative, integrated and
ecological assessment of visual impairments. We believe that the development of such tools is
essential for longitudinal monitoring of the disease, an appropriate medico-social response, the
implementation of remedial measures, as well as a detailed assessment of the clinical efficacy of new
gene treatments and artificial vision devices (prostheses), which are currently very promising.
Based on this observation, the ReViViFions (Réalité Virtuelle Vision Fonctionnelle) project aims to
develop new digital methods, based on the study of patient behavior in virtual environments, to
better characterize and quantify functional vision in people with low vision. More specifically, the
project should enable the development of new virtual reality tests for assessing functional vision on
ecological tasks, and the collection of associated subjective, behavioral and attentional data in order
to develop and clinically validate new associated quantitative models. The project will focus on three
specific populations suffering from visual impairments.
This project is part of Prof. Le Callet’s fundamental chair at the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF).