Vision improvement for patients with retinal degenerations

Abstract

Patients with retinal degenerative disorders such as age related macular degeneration suffer from reduced visual acuity and a significant loss of contrast sensitivity. The effect is a gross blurring of the visual scene over the significant area of their field of view. In this paper we present three novel image enhancement techniques for visual augmentation systems to enhance the remaining visual capability of those with patients suffering from retina degenerative diseases. The effectiveness of these algorithms was tested on 27 patients with average visual acuity of 0.63 and average contrast sensitivity of 1.22. Results show that Advanced Scaled Chromatic Edge (ASCE), and edge overlaying algorithms are very useful in detecting motion in dynamic scenes, whereas image Cartoonization algorithms held greatest preference for determining static spatial scenes. Copyright © 2011 ACTA Press