Dr. Melinda Chang Awarded $70,000 Knights Templar Eye Foundation Grant to use Machine-Learning to Study Cortical/Cerebral Visual Impairment in Children

Dr. Melinda Chang from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles was awarded a $70,000 grant for her research titled: Quantitative Visual Assessment in Children with Cortical/Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI) Using a Machine-Learning Model of Eye Tracking Data

Seeing’ requires a complex interaction between the retina, optic nerve and the cerebral cortex in order to process light into an image. Damage to any of these structures impairs this. In children, cortical, or cerebral, visual impairment (CVI), which is caused by damage to visual pathways in the brain, is a leading cause of visual impairment. Treatment options are limited because there are no well-designed scientific studies to support any specific therapeutic regimen. One reason for the absence of these studies is the lack of a standardized method to assess visual function in children with CVI. Because of their age and frequent neurologic problems, many children with CVI cannot cooperate with typical visual testing.

The goal of this project is to evaluate a novel technology, eye tracking, as a method for visual assessment in children with CVI. Eye tracking utilizes an infrared camera to capture eye movements while children view pictures and videos. This allows the doctor to non-invasively determine what a child with CVI is able to see, without requiring active participation. Because of the large volume of data generated by eye tracking (2,000 data points per second), she will collaborate with a computational neuroscientist to analyze the data using a machine learning algorithm. This will provide the foundation for our efforts to develop eye tracking into a clinically impactful measure of visual function in children with CVI, which will, in turn, facilitate development and testing of potential treatment options for this common and debilitating condition.