At Family Eyecare Centre, we use the Sanet Vision Integrator (SVI) as a key tool in Vision Therapy treatment programs. The SVI is a large touch-screen monitor that improves visual abilities for learning problems, sports, amblyopia, and traumatic brain injury.
The SVI uses eye hand co-ordination, saccadic eye movements, accuracy and depth perception. Targets on the screen can be made large or small, dark or faint. We encourage everyone to hit the target in the center – the smaller the target, the more accurate you have to be. If you miss a target, a dot appears on the screen. This gives you instant feedback on where you are actually touching and you are (hopefully) able re-adjust your next target – perhaps reaching further, closer, higher or lower.
In our office, we make use of various SVI modules:
- Eye-Hand Coordination: Dots are used as the targets. The hand, instead of a keyboard or laser pointer, is used so the patient gets “real life” tactile and proprioceptive feedback.
- Saccadic Trainer Function: This is useful in therapy for all patients to enhance eye-hand coordination, visual reaction time, and central-peripheral integration. ABC’s, 123’s and words can be used as the targets. We also make use of anti-suppression using red and blue glasses. The ‘visual search’ saccadic function can also simulate real life, where the majority of saccades are not to an anticipated fixed point in space, but rather to unexpected events in the environment.
- Rotator: Large and small rotators that can turn clockwise and counter-clockwise. Dots, ABC’s and 123’s can be used as targets. Being that these are moving targets, you have to consider where it will be when you want to touch it. You will see it in one spot, but by the time you react and try to hit the target, it will have moved. We often use sequential memory on the rotator, where the user must hit the targets in a specific order (eg. red, white, then blue).
- Tachistoscope: This helps to increase speed of both visual and auditory information processing and sequential memory. It will give up to 7 letters or words in a sequence that you must remember each time and hit them in the correct order. Missing the target, or incorrect order takes you back to the last item you were successfully with. We can also make it auto-sequential, another level of difficulty, where the sequence changes each time.
- Metronome: This helps all patients to enhance rhythm and timing and visual-auditory integration. It produces beats or clicks at a consistent rate, which is not as easy as you would think. The patient has to listen and stay on the beat as they read a chart and touch/locate a target. Often, if someone has mastered reading a chart, adding the metronome makes the chart more difficult for them.
- Charts (saccadic strips, hart charts, arrow charts): There are multiple charts to choose from. We can have four charts on the screen at once, have a chart rotating, or have saccadic strips. The saccadic strips can easily be moved closer or further apart. Further apart increases the level of difficulty.
The SVI enhances:
- saccades
- fixation stability
- eye-hand coordination
- visual reaction time
- speed and span of recognition
- automaticity
- contrast sensitivity
- visual and auditory sequencing and memory
- visual acuity in patients with amblyopia
- ABI patients with visual field loss
- visual-spatial neglect
- visual-vestibular integration problems
- rhythm, reading and math problems
The SVI is a integrative tool that is well used in our Vision Therapy program. To learn more about what it’s capable of, visit the SVI website.
By Dr. Nazima Sangha of Family Eyecare Centre
