Measuring visual information gathering in individuals with ultra low vision using virtual reality

People with ULV (visual acuity ≤ 20/1600 or 1.9 logMAR) lack form vision but have rudimentary levels of vision that can be used for a range of activities in daily life. However, current clinical tests are designed to assess form vision and do not provide information about the range of visually guided activities that can be performed in daily life using ULV. This is important to know given the growing number of clinical trials that recruit individuals with ULV (e.g., gene therapy, stem cell therapy) or restore vision to the ULV range in the blind (visual prosthesis). In this study, we develop a set of 19 activities (items) in virtual reality involving spatial localization/detection, motion detection, and direction of motion that can be used to assess visual performance in people with ULV. We estimated measures of item difficulty and person ability on a relative d prime (d′) axis using a signal detection theory based analysis for latent variables. The items represented a range of difficulty levels (− 1.09 to 0.39 in relative d′) in a heterogeneous group of individuals with ULV (− 0.74 to 2.2 in relative d′) showing the instrument’s utility as an outcome measure in clinical trials.