Eye movement behaviour of patients with visual field defects

People with a visual field defect suffer from reduced sensitivity or even complete blindness in parts of the visual field. Two common causes of visual field defects are glaucoma: a neurodegenerative disease in which peripheral vision slowly declines due to damage to the optic nerve, and homonymous hemianopia (HH): blindness in one half of the visual field, which is caused by damage to the visual pathways after the optic chiasm. In this dissertation, Gestefeld explored two questions. The first question was whether visual field defects can be detected based on eye movements. In her research, Gestefeld found that based on the eye movements, she could determine whether a video clip had been viewed by someone with a (simulated) visual field defect or with normal vision. This indicates that the eye movements contain sufficient information to diagnose visual field defects.
Her second question was whether virtual reality and eye-tracking can be used to support people with a visual field defect during their rehabilitation. People with a visual field defect learn in rehabilitation to compensate for their visual field defect by making a certain viewing rhythm. Participants who tried a VR headset or a mobile (head-mounted) eye tracker during various mobility exercises had a positive experience and saw benefits from using these technologies. The same was true for the occupational therapists. So it makes sense to further explore how Virtual reality and eye-tracking can be used to improve rehabilitation.
In summary, Gestefeld has found that eye movements can be used to determine the presence of a visual field defect in a very simple way. Thus, this could potentially lead to simpler methods of performing visual field measurements, for example in people for whom the current standard methods do not work well. In addition, they can also be used to compensate for a visual field defect.