SKERI's Senior Scientist, Dr. Preeti Verghese - in collaboration with Drs Suzanne McKee of Smith-Kettlewell and Dennis Levi of Berkeley's Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry & Vision Science - was awarded a 4-year NIH Research Project Grant (R01) from the National Eye Institute to study the potential for residual stereopsis in those with strabismus and amblyopia.
The project addresses an important problem, as the ability to use information about depth is critical to the safe execution of everyday tasks that require eye-hand coordination and navigating through the environment. Depth perception is compromised in individuals with amblyopia because of an impaired ability to combine information from the two eyes. Dr. Verghese and colleagues will examine the basis for impaired depth and vision in the central visual field, as well as the ability of the peripheral visual field to mediate depth information in amblyopia. These studies have implications for clinical tests that assess depth perception as well as training techniques to improve depth perception in amblyopia.