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The use of games to help children eyes testing

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Abstract

A doctor cannot perform a good diagnosis without the patient collaboration. One of the major problem for ophthalmologists with children is to capture and maintain their attention while performing their tests. Sometimes children give wrong answers, or not accurate, since they are no longer interested in the task. In this paper we use the serious game paradigm to help children eyes testing. We ask the children to perform a vision acuity and a daltonism test using our game PlayWithEyes. Children have to recognize symbols projected on a wall and point them in a touch interface which displays all the possible answers. Tests performed in a kindergarten with 65 children have shown that the use of our game helps to obtain children cooperation because they have fun, so their attention may last longer, thus improving the possibility to perform a correct diagnosis especially for very young children. This is particular important for some sight defects like amblyopia (lazy eye). Moreover, the system allows us to identify visual acuity reduction in two children. Tests also highlight some limitations of the tool which have been promptly fixed.

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Notes

  1. Amblyopia is the eye condition denoted by reduced vision not correctable by glasses or contact lenses, since it is not due to any eye disease. The brain, for some reason, does not fully acknowledge the images seen by the amblyopic eye. 3 % of children under six and 1-5 % of population have some form of amblyopia.

  2. Some minor variants with additional optotypes are also used in ophthalmology.

  3. We note here that paths represented in Fig. 4 cannot be identified when the figure is printed in black and white since Ishihara plates aims to evaluate color blindness.

  4. We must note here that an Internet connection is required only to sent data to the specialist. This operation can be done later.

  5. Snellen optotypes which use all the letters require a 10x10 grid, but the calculation is quite the same.

  6. With (x/10) we want to indicate the visual acuity that we want to test, i.e. the image shown to test 1/10 is bigger that the one to test 10/10.

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Acknowledgements

Partial financial support for this work is provided by the University of Padua through its research funding program. The authors would like to thank Alberto De Bortoli and Alberto Maragno for the implementation of the game, Luisa Pinello for her helpful suggestions and contribution to the work and teachers, children and parents of the kindergarten “G. Rodari” in Mogliano Veneto for participating to the test phase.

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Correspondence to Ombretta Gaggi.

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Gaggi, O., Ciman, M. The use of games to help children eyes testing. Multimed Tools Appl 75, 3453–3478 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-014-2444-x

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