Using 3D for rebalancing the visual system of amblyopic children

Amblyopia or “lazy” eye is a disorder of the visual system that causes poor vision in an eye that is otherwise physically normal, and it affects 2–3% of the population, which equates to conservatively around 10 million people under the age of 8 years worldwide. Amblyopia is a neurologically active process: the problem is caused by either no transmission or poor transmission of the visual stimulation through the optic nerve to the brain. With time, if no treatment is performed, the weak eye becomes even weaker and the other eye becomes dominant. Amblyopia is classically treated by clarifying the visual image with glasses, and patching (totally or partially) the dominant eye in order to force the use of the amblyopic eye. Patching suffers from several problems: it is unpopular, prolonged, and it can sometimes disrupts any residual fusion between the visions of the eyes. This results often in noncompliance with the therapy. Several alternatives have been introduced, including partial occlusion and vision rebalancing in which the image to the lazy eye is enhanced and the image to the good eye is penalized. We present how a 3D technology can be used to realize a system for vision rebalancing of video clips which exploits the stereo vision of the 3D system. This technology is relatively inexpensive, easy to use also in a domestic environment, with recreational activities enjoyable by the children, and easy to extend. We have implemented a prototype software system which processes a video and sends a penalized version to the good eye and an enhanced version to the lazy eye. We use a “framesever” for runtime video processing and several image filters and meta-filters to obtain the final video to be viewed by the patient. We argue for the viability of the proposed method in the treatment of amblyopic children.