MEDFORD, Ore. -- InSight Visual Therapy is using a vitrual tool to treat eye conditions. It's called Vivid Vision and it's a virtual reality kit with software specifically geared to help patients have a better connection between their brain and their vision.
It's one of the latest treatments offered to clinics and it can only be found in two places in the state of Oregon. One with InSight Vision Therapy in Medford and the other at an office in Bend.
Dr. Joanna Carter is an optometrist and owner of InSight Vision Therapy. She says her office decided to take the leap with this software after finding Vivid Vision could help patients in a way that the real world could not.
"A lot of what we do has tools and techniques that help up close. One of the areas that I thought we were lacking in was depth perception and activities in the distance," said Dr. Carter. "So in a virtual world, our patients are learning to use their eyes better together as a team. Then we can translate that into real life. That's the goal."
Vivid Vision is typically used to treat patients with wandering eyes or lazy eye. It improves your eye and brain connection and convinces your brain to use both eyes together.
"So when you have a patient with lazy eye, the brain really only wants to pay attention to the better seeing eye," said Dr. Carter. "But we can manipulate the settings in the virtual reality system so that both eyes are still viewing but the better seeing eye is a little blurred or obscured. That makes their poorer seeing eye work more. But they're still learning to use both eyes together."
To learn more about Vivid Vision, click here and for more information on how Vision Therapy can help other traumas like head injury, click here.