VR for the Inherited Retinal Degenerations assesment

In this work, I addressed the issue of inherited degenerative retinal disorders and the utilization of virtual reality for testing the efficacy of gene therapy. Firstly, I described the process of phototransduction, often disrupted by these diseases. Subsequently, I provided the reader with details on the prevalence and symptoms of a specific retinal disorder, Retinitis pigmentosa, as the most common representative of these conditions, and explained the impact of the mutation in the RPE65 gene on the visual cycle. Then, I discussed the potential treatment by gene therapy and pointed out that orientation and mobility tests, used to evaluate treatment efficacy, can be transformed into virtual reality. Furthermore, I outlined the specifics of VR related to the creation of such a test, including the influence of common visual impairments on test performance, technical parameters of VR headsets, and eye tracking technology. In the Solution Design chapter, I introduced the initial version of the Luna application designed for orientation and mobility tests and presented proposals for extensions, which I subsequently implemented in the Solution Implementation chapter. I tested the final version of the Luna application on 8 subjects and elaborated on the results in the Testing chapter.