Challenges in Vision Rehabilitation: Computational Simulations of Impaired Vision

Eli Peli
Harvard Medical School

Simulating impaired vision is useful for professional training and for patient family/caretaker education, and can also be used as a design and early testing tool. Good simulation of impaired vision should start with proper simulation of normal vision. This may not be as simple as it seems. Simulations have to be verified, that may be even harder. Simulation of visual loss frequently requires simulating visual field loss. Simulating of the impact of field loss is difficult, conceptually and practically. Image processing is emerging a major tool for simulating impaired vision. It is challenging and may not be possible to represent dynamic vision with single static image. It is difficult to represent parts of a visual scene that are unseen. I shall present a scheme for simulating normal sight that can then be used to simulate vision loss and will review some efforts and approaches (or lack thereof) to validate the simulations. An emerging big challenge is the simulation of very poor vision provided by prosthetic vision devices. These are harder to validate and may be crucially important to designing and improving these devices.



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