Eye tracking insights in medical research Q2 2024

In recent years, the focus on gait therapy research has intensified, driven by a desire to enhance session efficiency. Accelerating rehabilitation timelines is imperative to accommodate a larger patient population annually. For instance, the Centro de Rehabilitacion Infantil Teleton, a prominent rehabilitation center in Mexico, operates at total capacity, leading to patient rejections. The acceleration of rehabilitation relies on encouraging patients to engage in active muscle efforts. Significant strides have been made in this direction, leveraging moti...Show more

• Tobii VR

Visual search problems are often reported in children with Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI). To tackle the clinical challenge of objectively differentiating CVI from other neurodevelopmental disorders, we developed a novel test battery. Visual search tasks were coupled with verbal and gaze-based measurements. Two search tasks were performed by children with CVI (n: 22; mean age (SD): 9.63 (.46) years) ADHD (n: 32; mean age (SD): 10.51 (.25) years), dyslexia (n: 28; mean age (SD): 10.29 (.20) years) and neurotypical development (n: 44; mean age (SD): 9.30...Show more

• Tobii Pro X3-120

Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience significantly reduced quality of life when PD is complicated with Pisa syndrome (PS). PS is a postural abnormality associated with a lateral bending of the trunk, causing the patient to lean to one side. Microsaccades during fixation are transmitted to the visual cortex, and this gaze movement may be impaired in PD. We aimed to detect presymptomatic signs of PS. We enrolled 50 patients with PD without dementia and investigated the visual systems in patients with concurrent PD and PS based on a Romberg rat...Show more

• Tobii Pro Spectrum

Eye tracking research technologies are often used to study how individuals attend visually to different types of AAC displays (e.g. visual scene displays, grid displays). The assumption is that efficiency of visual search may relate to efficiency of motor selection necessary for communication via aided AAC; however, this assumption has not received direct empirical study. We examined the relation between speed of visual search and speed of motor selection of symbols. Ten individuals on the autism spectrum (AS; Study 1) and nine with Down syndrome (DS; St...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 2
• Tobii Pro X2-60 / X2-30
• Tobii Pro Studio
• Tobii Pro Lab

This case study explores the potential of integrating attentional bias modification training (ABMT) with mirror exposure therapy (MET), utilizing virtual reality and eye-tracking, for a 14-year-old girl diagnosed with anorexia nervosa (AN). The ABMT-MET intervention was used alongside a standard treatment program called Home Treatment (HoT), which combines cognitive behavioral therapy with family-based therapy. Though the patient began HoT with a 3-week inpatient phase, the ABMT-MET intervention specifically took place during the subsequent Home Treatmen...Show more

• Tobii VR

Delays in early social and executive function are predictive of later developmental delays and eventual neurodevelopmental diagnoses. There is limited research examining such markers in the first year of life. High-risk infant groups commonly present with a range of neurodevelopmental challenges, including social and executive function delays, and show higher rates of autism diagnoses later in life. For example, it has been estimated that up to 30% of infants diagnosed with cerebral palsy (CP) will go on to be diagnosed with autism later in life.

• Tobii Pro TX-300

We aimed to clarify the characteristics of the Kampo specialists' gaze during Kampo abdominal examinations on simulated patients and obtain suggestions for improving medical students' gaze during Kampo medicine abdominal examinations.

• Tobii Pro Glasses 3
• Tobii Pro Lab

Objective: Vestibular/ocular deficits occur with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). The vestibular/ocular motor screening (VOMS) tool is used to assess individuals post-mTBI, which primarily relies upon subjective self-reported symptoms. Instrumenting the VOMS (iVOMS) with technology may allow for more objective assessment post-mTBI, which reflects actual task performance. This study aimed to validate the iVOMS analytically and clinically in mTBI and controls. Methods: Seventy-nine people with sub-acute mTBI (<12 weeks post-injury) and forty-four health...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 2

Objective: Epilepsy patients often report memory deficits despite normal objective testing, suggesting that available measures are insensitive or that non-mnemonic factors are involved. The Visual Paired Comparison Task (VPCT) assesses novelty preference, the tendency to fixate on novel images rather than previously viewed items, requiring recognition memory for the “old” images. As novelty preference is a sensitive measure of hippocampal-dependent memory function, we predicted impaired VPCT performance in epilepsy patients compared to healthy controls. ...Show more

• Tobii Pro X2-60 / X2-30
• Tobii Pro Studio

Background: Early identification of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) improves long-term outcomes, yet significant diagnostic delays persist. Methods: A retrospective cohort of 449 children (ASD: 246, typically developing [TD]: 203) was used for model development. Eye-movement data were collected from the participants watching videos that featured eye-tracking paradigms for assessing social and non-social cognition. Five machine learning algorithms, namely random forest, support vector machine, logistic regression, artificial neural network, and extreme gra...Show more

The STRAT-PARK initiative aims to provide a platform for stratifying Parkinson’s disease (PD) into biological subtypes, using a bottom-up, multidisciplinary biomarker-based and data-driven approach. PD is a heterogeneous entity, exhibiting high interindividual clinicopathological variability. This diversity suggests that PD may encompass multiple distinct biological entities, each driven by different molecular mechanisms. Molecular stratification and identification of disease subtypes is therefore a key priority for understanding and treating PD. STRAT-P...Show more

• Tobii Pro Fusion

Objective: We sought to design a Virtual Reality (VR) program integrating commercially available eye and hand tracking to autonomously and accurately assess components of the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS). Background: The rising demand for remote care has highlighted the limitations of current approaches to remote neurological examinations, creating a need for tools that can improve reliability of remote care. VR headsets have recently incorporated eye and hand tracking functionality but have not been evaluated for clinical use. Desi...Show more

• Tobii VR

Diagnosing cognitive impairment is an ongoing field of research especially in the elderly. Assessing the health status of the elderly can be a complex process that requires both subjective and objective measures. Subjective measures, such as self-reported responses to questions, can provide valuable information about a person’s experiences, feelings, and beliefs. However, from a scientific point of view, objective measures, based on quantifiable data that can be used to assess a person’s physical and cognitive functioning, are more appropriate and rigoro...Show more

• Tobii Pro Glasses 3

After stroke, patients can experience visual hypersensitivity, an increase in their sensitivity for visual stimuli as compared to their state prior to the stroke. Candidate behavioural mechanisms for these subjective symptoms are atypical bottom-up sensory processing and impaired selective attention, but empirical evidence is currently lacking. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between post-stroke visual hypersensitivity and sensory thresholds, sensory processing speed, and selective attention using computational modelling of...Show more

• Tobii Pro Fusion
• Psychopy
• Titta