SAN DIEGO – A new wearable device detects, with a high degree of precision, various types of visual dysfunction, which eventually affects most patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). The device uses advanced digital technology to stimulate the retina and the occipital cortex while also stimulating the eye tracking system, and reports out this data, one of its developers, Jennifer Graves, MD, PhD, director of neuroimmunology research, University of California, San Diego, said in an interview.
“In one paradigm of testing, we can get both sets of information,” which eliminates the complicated equipment set-up used by neuro-ophthalmologists, and makes eye assessments more readily available, she said.
“We can make this accessible for more clinicians and more patients, even eventually having it in an emergency setting or an outpatient clinic setting.”
Dr. Graves discussed this and other next-generation digital tools at the annual meeting held by the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis.
Currently, patients with MS can use accelerometers that determine overall activity level and devices that detect heart rate variability. They can also access mobile apps that track symptoms and medication adherence.
Limited sensitivity of current tools
However, current tools used to determine disability in MS are limited. The classification of MS subtypes is largely retrospective, and the preferred Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) is problematic, said Dr. Graves.
For example, she said, the EDSS lacks sensitivity to short-term changes, depends on ambulation, and only poorly captures upper-extremity disability. “We know our patients are experiencing change and we know the tools we have now aren’t capturing that.”
She used the example of a pianist who can no longer play well with her right hand, but this can’t be detected with current tools. A device that uses technology from the gaming and computer control industry “can quantify that” change, said Dr. Graves.
She added that . “Rather than having descriptive terms, these digital tools will help us quantitate change so we can take action.”
The new sensing devices use multiple sensors, including accelerometers, gyroscopes, and surface electrical signals in muscles to capture very precise temporal and textural information related to movement. Their development uses traditional signal processing as well as artificial intelligence approaches.
Dr. Graves’s device, the MSight, captures afferent and efferent visual function with a single mobile brain-computer interface.
At least 80% of patients with MS have some measurable dysfunction in the afferent system that oversees how light from the environment is turned into images in the brain, explained Dr. Graves. The efferent visual system that controls eye movements is also “profoundly impacted by MS” with, again, up to 80% of patients with MS experiencing related dysfunction, she said.
Her new visual system correlates with burden of MS disease, said Dr. Graves. “Having efferent and eye tracking problems correlates with overall disability and walking function.”
The information collected by this new device “tends to be really helpful even in people who don’t appear to be disabled with MS because it’s literally a window into the brain to let us see what’s happening,” said Dr. Graves.
She and her colleagues are testing the MSight device in clinical trials and have a provisional patent for it.