Firm develops kit to test eye movements after injury, saying it can diagnose concussion in one minute.
Sports authorities, organisers and players throughout the world are paying more attention to the dangers of concussion injuries.
In the United States, the National Football League (NFL) has proposed an estimated $1 billion concussion settlement with thousands of retired players as more is discovered about the longterm dangers of head injuries in contacts sports.
World soccer governing body FIFA brought in worldwide measures to stop players who might be concussed continuing in a game. There is now provision for referees to stop games while players are evaluated by team doctors.
But testing for concussion is difficult, imperfect and time-consuming.
Now a technology company SyncThink is proposing a camera-based system for diagnosing concussion in a minute by tracking eye movements.
Concussions are a mild form of traumatic brain injury and according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control there are nearly 4 million instances per year in athletes of all ages.
Symptoms can vary from headaches and confusion to slurred speech and vomiting. In some cases, symptoms could take days to appear making concussions all the more dangerous.
Concussions affect the brain's anticipatory neural network which guides how we react to the world us. The largest input into that network is visual. It's this fact that Boston-based technology company SyncThink put at the core of a technology that can reliably diagnose a concussion very quickly.
"Our assessment data is collected at a very high rate which allows us to produce a full assessment within one minute," said Dan Beeler, the Chief Technology Officer of SyncThink.
A user puts on a virtual reality headset that is connected to a computer tablet. A moving circle appears in the display. As the eyes follow the circle, infrared cameras follow the eyes. The data collected from the eye tracking technology is processed and compared against a baseline of normal eye movement.
According to Dan Beeler, the test could potentially decrease the chances of people with concussions incurring further injuries, both on the playing field and the battle field.
The company has been working with college sport teams and the U.S. military to perfect the device.
"There is much more awareness of the risks out there and a growing acceptance of those risks and ways to mitigate them and our technology can play a part in that," said Beeler.
The goal now, according to Beeler, is giving the thousands that suffer a concussion every year a new tool to stay safe.
