One of the major causes of blindness is the negligence in detecting early symptoms of glaucoma. Glaucoma is a disease that if goes unnoticed can cause blindness, but if you detect the symptoms in the initial stages, you can actually save yourself from becoming blind. Moreover, according to the statistics, around 90% of the people in Japan are reluctant to go for a glaucoma check-up, and they usually consider it only when it’s too late. Hence, scientists at Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine have recently collaborated with the Japanese television company Sendai Broadcasting Co., Ltd. and developed a special video game that can detect the symptoms of glaucoma in the early stages and can actually prevent you from being blind.
The video game, “Meteor Blaster”, is primarily a shooting game in which you have to shoot the upcoming meteors and, side by side, grab the powerups that are available in the form of white light orbs. In order to play this, your phone should be placed at a distance of 30 cm from your eyes, and your goal is to shoot as many meteors as you can. In the end, you will be allocated a score that ranges from one to five. Getting “one” on the scorecard means that you don’t have any symptoms of glaucoma, but if you get four or five points, then it’s time to go to the doctor immediately.
What’s more, you have to play through four stages, and that makes a total of 16 sections to go through. The algorithm will assess the condition of your eyes and generate results accordingly. This would prove beneficial to people as it is not something that you would not like to do as everyone loves to play games. Moreover, you have to play this game for at least five minutes if you want to detect glaucoma. A spokesperson of Sendai Broadcasting’s New Business Division stated, “It’s said that playing video games makes your eyes worse, but we reversed the idea and worked on developing a game for eye health.”
It has been reported that around 4.65 million people in Japan are suffering from this disease, and glaucoma has been regarded as the number one cause of blindness. If you become successful in detecting glaucoma in its early stages, then it can easily be treated with the help of medications. Although video games are known to be detrimental to eyesight, this particular game can actually save you from blindness.