The World Health Organisation estimates that
253 million people worldwide are visually impaired, and 39 million people are blind (see: https://www.who.int/blindness/vision-report/wrv-info/en). Visual impairment (VI) is a global concern, which is likely to become more significant as the standard of medical care improves, and the average lifespan increases. VI brings a wide range of psychological and practical challenges to everyday life, not least in ''mobility': the ability to travel from one place to another safely and independently. However, quantifying mobility is difficult (often involving use of indoor and outdoor “obstacle” courses) and the most critical situations for mobility failure would involve putting patient safety at risk. In this project we will address these issues using newly available Motion Capture (MC) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies. Such equipment is becoming commonplace and using such equipment we will investigate the design of new mobility assessments, including tests in safety critical scenarios. Moreover, we will also look to develop and evaluate novel interventions that can improve mobility performance in visual impairment.
We aim to develop a suite of virtual mobility testing courses incorporating tasks that would be dangerous in the real world: one such course we have already developed involves a cluttered environment with vertical and lateral hazards which need to be stepped around, or stepped over. Use of motion capture and VR have enabled us to gather a richer set of metrics to characterise mobility performance than is commonly used, which could also lead to earlier detection of mobility problems. The functional performance of patients who have undergone gene therapy is measured on mobility courses which are difficult to replicate in different settings, but we would create a VR version to test these individuals. The impact of different types of visual impairment(eg central vs. peripheral visual field loss) can be invstigated and VR enables us to examine these issues both with healthy participants (simulating field loss) and real patients. The ultimate aim of the project is to use the unique capabilities of VR to design and test rehabilitation programmes that would improve mobility performance. For example, individuals with limited visual capacity experience a bottleneck for visual input. Multiplexing is one strategy to overcome this, where several items of data are presented at the same time and/or in the same location. Perceptually this can be confusing, and VR would allow us to explore the most efficient configurations for information delivery.
https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/VR2/
Entry Requirements
Applicants must have obtained or be about to obtain a First or Upper Second class UK honours degree, or the equivalent qualifications gained outside the UK, in an appropriate area of science, engineering or technology.
How to Apply
To be considered for this project you MUST submit a formal online application form - full details on how to apply can be found on the MRC Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) website www.manchester.ac.uk/mrcdtpstudentships
Applicants interested in this project should make direct contact with the Primary Supervisor to arrange to discuss the project further as soon as possible.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Equality, diversity and inclusion is fundamental to the success of The University of Manchester, and is at the heart of all of our activities. The full Equality, diversity and inclusion statement can be found on the website https://www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/study/research/apply/equality-diversity-inclusion/
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