Enhancing edge indicator for visual field loss compensation for homonymous hemianopia patients

Homonymous hemianopia (HH) is a visual field defect in which the same side of both eyes is blind. In this paper, we propose an out-of-visual-field information compensation system for HH patients using an optical see-through head-mounted display. In the proposed system, in order to reduce the obstruction in the remaining visual field, indicators are placed at the boundary between the remaining visual field and the defective part to notify the HH patient about the events occurring at the blinded side of the visual field. Two different kinds of indicators, namely brightness-based and flicker-based, are designed to visualize the spatial information of the events. We conducted experiments with simulated HH participants to verify the effectiveness of the proposed system and compare the two designed indicators, as well as an existing method that makes use of the overlay overview window. The experimental results proved that the proposed system can react more intuitively and is faster than the existing method in the part near the central visual field. Moreover, it can alleviate the obstruction problem of the existing method.