Virtual reality and augmented reality- emerging screening and diagnostic techniques in ophthalmology: A systematic review

In health care, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have been applied extensively for many purposes. Similar to other technologies such as telemedicine and artificial intelli-gence, VR and AR may improve clinical diagnosis and screening services in ophthalmology by alleviating current problems, including workforce shortage, diagnostic error, and under -diagnosis. In the past decade a number of studies and products have used VR and AR con-cepts to build clinical tests for ophthalmology, but comprehensive reviews on these studies are limited. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review on the use of VR and AR as a di-agnostic and screening tool in ophthalmology. We identified 26 studies that implemented a variety of VR and AR tests on different conditions, including VR cover tests for binocu-lar vision disorder, VR perimetry for glaucoma, and AR slit lamp biomicroscopy for retinal diseases. In general, while VR and AR tools can become standardized, automated, and cost-effective tests with good user experience, several weaknesses, including unsatisfactory ac-curacy, weak validation, and hardware limitations, have prevented these VR and AR tools from having wider clinical application. Also, a comparison between VR and AR is made to explain why studies have predominantly used VR rather than AR.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.