iPhone App for Vision Tests Gains FDA Approval

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized use of an iPhone app to allow retinal disease patients to monitor their vision between visits to the doctor.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved use of the MyVisionTrack iPhone app from Vital Art and Science (VAS), an ophthalmic medical device company, to allow patients to monitor their vision in between visits to the doctor.

MyVisionTrack was developed for elderly patients with serious retinal diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. It incorporates a proprietary shape discrimination hyperacuity (SDH) test by the Retina Foundation of the Southwest, which developed an eye exam that's suitable for a PC or smartphone and is unaffected by factors such as user distance, Mike Bartlett, president of VAS, told eWEEK in an email.

The test consists of three circles, one of which is distorted, Bartlett said. The app instructs patients to "touch the circle that is different," he explained. "As they get it right, the distortion gets smaller; when they miss, the distortion gets bigger," he said.

Then the test moves to the user's threshold until the distorted circle is no longer visible. An algorithm determines a patient's vision threshold using statistics generated by the app.