Time-Domain Color Mapping for Color Vision Deficiency Assistive Technology

Abstract

Color vision deficiency is a surprisingly frequent vision impairment, but not considered to be a mayor eye disease due to being inherited condition and not progressive condition. However it poses serious restrictions on a visually impaired person because vision deficiency tests are commonly used to disqualify individuals affected by color vision deficiency from certain occupations. Color vision deficiency cannot be cured, thus it is important to develop suitable assistive technology to overcome the restrictions it poses. Virtual reality can project custom and separate images to both eyes in a real-time and thus enabling a new class of assistive technology that can deliver visual information in a highly customized manner. Virtual reality based assistive technology is promising for age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and particularly for color vision deficiency. Virtual reality prototype is created based on a video see-through setup using commercial virtual reality headset and stereo camera. The prototype uses custom image processing to transform visual information from the camera to color vision deficiency friendly form. Time-domain color mapping real-time image processing is proposed to improve scores on standard color vision deficiency tests - Ishihara tests. Experiment is conducted to evaluate a protanope time-domain color mapping with sinusoidal envelope.