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Session: Eye
Session starts: Thursday 26 January, 14:30
Presentation starts: 15:00
Room: Room 558

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Mo Nipshagen (Donders Centre for Cognition)
Jaap de Ruyter van Steveninck (Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour)
Yagmur Güçlütürk (Donders Centre for Cognition, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour)
Umut Güçlü (Donders Centre for Cognition, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour)

Abstract:
Building prosthetics for vision impaired people is a challenging task. One of the most promising approaches is to use implanted electrodes to stimulate the visual cortex, eliciting spheres of light called "Phosphenes" appearing in the visual field. Few prosthetic devices exist and a common problem with them is that they do not take eye movement into account. Humans perform saccadic eye movement to scan their surroundings and to focus on particular points in their field of vision. Not accounting for eye movement leads to a mislocalization of the phosphenes in space, which can be disorienting and nauseating. In this project, we implemented a state-of-the-art phosphene simulation following biological properties in a virtual reality environment, and let participants experience the current state of prosthetic devices, which do not compensate for eye movement. We contrasted that with an implementation utilizing eye-tracking for gaze-assisted viewing and enabling controlled saccades. In our experiment the gaze assisted condition was rated more comfortable and less tiring, and participants performed comparable to a baseline condition, that was in line with common VR experiences. The results suggest that gaze assisted prosthetic devices bear the possibility to increase comfort and reduce strain, while also enabling more control for the patient and therefore should be considered when building a prosthetic vision device.