Beyond strict occlusion, in the monocular phase at the beginning of a visual therapy treatment, the following are exercised:
- the accommodation
- ocular motility
- pattern recognition
- stimulus discrimination
Work is done with the amblyopic eye, suppressing the vision of the dominant one in order for it to come as close as possible to the conditions of the latter: this will be achieved merge the images of the two eyes.
To achieve this image fusion, there is an intermediate phase of monocular training in a binocular field. Dicopt has proven its effectiveness in this regard through its contrast video games: the application allows the degree of suppression of the dominant eye to be calibrated to adapt the situation of each patient in their corresponding stage. You can take a look at this webinar to visualize the operation of these games.
Once the suppression is calibrated, all the relevant visual information to overcome the game will be shown to the lazy eye: the dominant eye will receive the stimulus with background elements to receive enough information to allow merging.
The patient will improve the visual acuity of his amblyopic eye, will have the ability to fuse and will be ready to move on to the binocular game phase, which we will talk about later.