eSights' new assistive technology helps patients with central vision loss

Roland Mattern, director of marketing for eSight, sat down with Optometry Times during the 2022 American Academy of Optometry meeting held in San Diego to give a demonstration of the company's eSight 4 device, an assistive technology for patients with central vision loss.

Editor's note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hi there, I'm Roland Mattern, and I'm the director of marketing for eSight. This is our device, eSight 4. It is an assistive technology for patients with central vision loss. The way it works is, the camera picks up the image that the person can no longer perceive, runs it through a software algorithm, and projects it onto two OLED monitors, one in front of each eye. And the wearer then uses a peripheral and parafoveal vision to process the visual stimuli.

The way it works is the way you wear it. It can be used for any activity of daily living, from reading to watching movies, to walking about or shopping or traveling. If I'm using it for reading or computer work, I'd wear it like this, in a fully down position, but if I want to ambulate, I can slightly tilt it up. Now my peripheral vision is completely unobstructed, and I can walk around using my peripheral vision. If I approached somebody, a street sign, a food label, a price tag, an Uber, I can always point the camera momentarily at what I want to see, glance up, and I can read what is in front of me. So it's a very versatile technology.

We are aimed at patients with visual acuity of about 20/80 to 20/100. And in many cases, we'll get people back down to 20/20 vision, functional vision.

We are completely validated with a clinical study, where we have demonstrated seven line distance acuity gain, a 12 letter contrast gain, significant improvement in facical recognition, which of course it's very important to the human aspect of the technology. And we also have 100% mobility, which is unique for our product, whereas many products that are VR-based completely block your peripheral vision; now that aspect of mobility is lost.