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Email UsSight & Science: Vision Research from Diverse Fields
Vision-related translational science ranges from investigating how mechanical and signal transduction processes give rise to sight, to examining how humans synthesize spatial and descriptive information about our external environment, and to improving visual performance under limiting conditions.
By its nature, the realm of vision science spans a variety of disparate fields such as physics, neuroscience, physiology, psychology, computer science, engineering, architecture, communication, education, and medicine. Researchers, clinicians, and scientists from any field of vision science are encouraged to apply.
Five pilot grants were awarded in amounts up to $50,000 for one-year starting 1 October 2020.
Funding level
Up to $50,000 per award
Sponsoring Program
Awardees
Principal Investigator: Melissa Dell, PhD, Faculty of Arts Sciences
This project will use recent advances in deep learning to develop innovative methods for inferring complex document layouts. These will be used to build a database of historical newspaper content for American communities across the 19th and 20th centuries. Existing historical newspaper databases typically do not provide information on text structures. There are two aims of this project 1) to develop an open source document layout analysis pipeline that will aid in the development of facilitative technologies for the visually impaired, and 2) to make a database of newspaper content available to the visually impaired.
Principal Investigator: David Friedman, MD, PhD, Massachusetts Eye & Ear
Glaucoma is a leading cause of irreversible blindness. Latanoprost is a prostaglandin analog that is administered via eye-drops, reduces the intraocular pressure (IOP) and is the first line treatment for glaucoma. However, adherence is suboptimal, we have developed a drug-eluting contact lens (L-CL) where the drug continuously diffuses from a drug-polymer film that is encapsulated in the periphery of a contact lens hydrogel. L-CLs have demonstrated in vivo release of latanoprost in amounts comparable to latanoprost eye drops for up to one month. The main purpose of this pilot study is to obtain preliminary data on the safety, tolerability, and comfort of the L-CL. A second aim is to assess the efficacy of the L-CL for the treatment of glaucoma or ocular hypertension.
Principal Investigator: Paulo Lizano, MD, PhD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
The visual system has increasingly been recognized as an important site of pathology in patients with schizophrenia and other psychoses. Visual system impairments manifest as visual perceptual aberrations, deficits in visual processing, and visual hallucinations. Two case studies have found that transcranial direct current stimulation of the prefrontal and occipital cortex improved visual hallucinations in treatment refractory patients with psychosis. However, it is unclear whether the symptom reductions resulted from activity changes in the visual cortex or not. This project aims to answer the question whether high definition transcranial direct current stimulation when targeted to a specific brain region (extrastriate visual cortex) can improve behavioral symptoms such as visual hallucinations, visual processing, and cognition.
Principal Investigator: Gang Luo PhD, Schepens Eye Research Institute
Prevalence of myopia has reached epidemic proportion, in Asia and US. There are two pain points in myopia control. First, mass screening for myopia in a population of hundreds of millions on a yearly basis is extremely challenging, and access to vision testing is a bottle neck at the beginning of vision care flow for many patients. Second, monitoring of myopia progression is usually not in timely manner. We have developed a proprietary technology for measuring refraction error using a mobile application, without the need for additional optical attachments. This study will compare three different vision measurement approaches in 100 school age children: using an auto-refractor by a clinician (ground truth), with the app by study staff with no vision care training, and with the app at home by the parents.
Principal Investigator: Lotfi Merabet, OD, PhD, Massachusetts Eye & Ear
Adrenoleukodystrophy is a genetic disorder and its most devastating form is cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy (cALD). This progressive disease manifests early in childhood and is potentially fatal. In the majority of these patients, the connections within the central visual system become compromised leading to a variety of visual perceptual deficits. These deficits are an important early marker for disease progression, but standard ophthalmic testing methods cannot detect these deficits effectively. We have developed a highly innovative virtual reality (VR) based testing platform that can be used in pediatric populations. Combining this VR approach with enhanced brain imaging techniques will allow for more comprehensive characterization of the neurophysiology associated with visual processing deficits, disease progression, as well as track the progress of gene therapy in patients with cALD.