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Published on: February 12, 2020
The Effects of Consumer-grade Virtual Reality Headsets on Adult Visual Function
Yan Long1, Ye Shen1, DongYu Guo1
1Department of Ophthalmology, the First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University , Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
Introduction:
Consumer-grade virtual reality (VR) headset is being used with increasing frequency nowadays, however, the effect on visual function is not clear.
Objectives:
We here investigate whether using VR headset changes adults' visual function and take into account the possible factors.
Methods:
We compared the uncorrected distant visual acuity (UDVA), uncorrected near visual acuity (UNVA), best corrected visual acuity (BCVA), low contrast visual acuity (LCVA), glare visual acuity (GVA), refractive error (RE), amplitude of accommodation (ACC), and pupil diameter (PD) before and after using VR headset 10 mintues at a time twice per day for 2 successive weeks in 40 volunteers with a mean age of 28.6 years. Differences in these 8 parameters before vs. after VR headset use were analyzed using SPSS 22.0.
Results:
In our study, we found that the amplitude of accommodation had significantly increased by 0.53 (F = 5.673; P = .006) after using, while visual acuity, refractive error and pupil diameter did not show statistically significant changes (P > .05). Correlation test showed that there was no significant correlation between any two parameters on visual function.
Conclusion:
It is discovered that using a consumer-grade VR headset 10 minutes at a time twice daily for 2 weeks improved the amplitude of accommodation of adults dramatically, while neither visual acuity nor refractive error was affected.
Abbreviations:
VR: visual reality; UDVA: uncorrected distant visual acuity; UNVA: uncorrected near visual acuity; BCVA: best corrected visual acuity; LCVA: low contrast visual acuity; GVA: glare visual acuity; RE: refractive error; ACC: amplitude of accommodation; PD: pupil diameter; 3D: three-dimensional; VDTS: visual display terminal syndrome; FOV: field of view; SEQ: spherical equivalent diopter.
