Eye-hand coordination using two irregular phosphene maps in simulated prosthetic vision for retinal prostheses

Clinical trials have shown different irregular characteristics of phosphene maps can be elicited by retinal prostheses. This study investigated the effect of distortion and dropout percentage on two novel eye-hand coordination tasks. 16 volunteers participated in two tasks on a touch screen: drawing geometric shapes and writing Chinese characters. The accuracy and efficiency in both tasks were recorded and compared while one irregular characteristic was changed. Results show that the accuracy and efficiency of both tasks decrease as the variability of distortion and dropout percentage increase, which may provide theoretical and practical significance for the clinical research on retinal prostheses.