About My Research
Center/Research Area Affiliations
- Age-related Macular Degeneration
- Mobility Enhancement and Vision Rehabilitation Center of Excellence
Biography
Dr. Luo's past experience as a research engineer, including his work with optics, image processing, and biomedical engineering, has influenced his interest in the mechanisms of the human visual system. At Schepens Eye Research Institute of Mass. Eye and Ear, he studies assistive technology for individuals with visual impairments. In particular, his current research includes the development of portable collision warning devices, including smartphone-based technologies, to improve walking mobility. He also studies driving behaviors in individuals with visual impairments.
Education
MS, PhD, Chongquing University, China (1994, 1997)
Postgraduate Training
Fellowship, Nankai Univesrity, China (1997-1999)
Fellowship, Schepens Eye Research Institute of Mass. Eye and Ear (2002-2004)
Honors
2017:Innovation Technology Low Vision Award, Research to Prevent Blindness
2014: Alice Alder Fellowship, Harvard Medical School
2012: William F. Milton Award, Harvard University
2009: Best Fellow Paper, Schepens Eye Research Institute of Mass. Eye and Ear
2008: Hochhausen Access Technology Research Award, Canadian National Institute for the Blind
2007: Gordon Conference Travel Award, Oculomotor System Biology
1996: First Prize of China Instrumentation Society Award
- Investigation of Population-Based Fall Risk in Eye Diseases. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2024 Feb 01; 142(2):106-107.
- Field Evaluation of a Mobile App for Assisting Blind and Visually Impaired Travelers to Find Bus Stops. Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2024 01 02; 13(1):11.
- Evaluation of a mobile app for dark adaptation measurement in individuals with age-related macular degeneration. Sci Rep. 2023 12 14; 13(1):22191.
- Gaze Scanning at Street Crossings by Pedestrians With Homonymous Hemianopia With and Without Hemispatial Neglect. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2023 Nov 01; 64(14):26.
- Impact of Apps as Assistive Devices for Visually Impaired Persons. Annu Rev Vis Sci. 2023 09 15; 9:111-130.
- Comparison of visual SLAM and IMU in tracking head movement outdoors. Behav Res Methods. 2023 09; 55(6):2787-2799.
- Preliminary Evaluation of a Smartphone App for Refractive Error Measurement. Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2022 02 01; 11(2):40.
- BASELINE PREDICTORS ASSOCIATED WITH 3-YEAR CHANGES IN DARK ADAPTATION IN AGE-RELATED MACULAR DEGENERATION. Retina. 2021 Oct 01; 41(10):2098-2105.
- Home-Use Evaluation of a Wearable Collision Warning Device for Individuals With Severe Vision Impairments: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2021 Sep 01; 139(9):998-1005.
- Influence of COVID-19 Lockdowns on the Usage of a Vision Assistance App Among Global Users With Visual Impairment: Big Data Analytics Study. J Med Internet Res. 2021 05 12; 23(5):e26283.
- Area under the dark adaptation curve as a reliable alternate measure of dark adaptation response. Br J Ophthalmol. 2022 10; 106(10):1450-1456.
- Delayed dark adaptation in central serous chorioretinopathy. Am J Ophthalmol Case Rep. 2021 Jun; 22:101098.
- What Visual Targets Are Viewed by Users With a Handheld Mobile Magnifier App. Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2021 03 01; 10(3):16.
- CompSNN: A lightweight spiking neural network based on spatiotemporally compressive spike features. Neurocomputing. 2021; 425:96-106.
- Inpatient Virtual Vision Clinic Improves Access to Vision Rehabilitation Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Arch Rehabil Res Clin Transl. 2021 Mar; 3(1):100100.
- With Motion Perception, Good Visual Acuity May Not Be Necessary for Driving Hazard Detection. Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2020 12; 9(13):18.
- Measuring Virtual Reality Headset Resolution and Field of View: Implications for Vision Care Applications. Optom Vis Sci. 2020 08; 97(8):573-582.
- Evaluation of the Driving Safety of Visually Impaired Bioptic Drivers Based on Critical Events in Naturalistic Driving. Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2020 07; 9(8):14.
- Data Acquisition, Processing, and Reduction for Home-Use Trial of a Wearable Video Camera-Based Mobility Aid. Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2020 06; 9(7):14.
- Towards Wide Range Tracking of Head Scanning Movement in Driving. Intern J Pattern Recognit Artif Intell. 2020 Dec 15; 34(13).
- Using an Automated Hirschberg Test App to Evaluate Ocular Alignment. J Vis Exp. 2020 03 24; (157).
- Bioptic Telescope Use in Naturalistic Driving by People with Visual Impairment. Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2020 03; 9(4):11.
- Driving Safety of Cognitively-Impaired Drivers Based on Near Collisions in Naturalistic Driving. J Alzheimers Dis Rep. 2020 Jan 02; 4(1):1-7.
- How 16,000 people used a smartphone magnifier app in their daily lives. Clin Exp Optom. 2020 11; 103(6):847-852.
- A Mobile Application for Keyword Search in Real-World Scenes. IEEE J Transl Eng Health Med. 2019; 7:2900210.
- Development and Preliminary Evaluation of a Smartphone App for Measuring Eye Alignment. Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2019 Jan; 8(1):19.
- Preliminary Evaluation of a Mobile Device for Dark Adaptation Measurement. Transl Vis Sci Technol. 2019 Jan; 8(1):11.
- A Hardware-Friendly Optical Flow-Based Time-to-Collision Estimation Algorithm. Sensors. 2019; 19(4):807.
- Detection of Lane-Change Events in Naturalistic Driving Videos. Intern J Pattern Recognit Artif Intell. 2018 Oct; 32(10).
- Preliminary Evaluation of a Wearable Camera-based Collision Warning Device for Blind Individuals. Optom Vis Sci. 2018 09; 95(9):747-756.
- Evaluation of a Paradigm to Investigate Detection of Road Hazards when Using a Bioptic Telescope. Optom Vis Sci. 2018 09; 95(9):785-794.
- Optimization of Optomotor Response-based Visual Function Assessment in Mice. Sci Rep. 2018 06 26; 8(1):9708.
- Does Central Vision Loss Impair Visual Search Performance of Adults More than Children? Optom Vis Sci. 2018 05; 95(5):443-451.
- Exploiting Lightweight Statistical Learning for Event-Based Vision Processing. IEEE Access. 2018; 6:19396-19406.
- Detection of Risky Driving Behaviors in the Naturalistic Environment in Healthy Older Adults and Mild Alzheimer's Disease. Geriatrics (Basel). 2018 Jun; 3(2).
- Dynamic gaze-position prediction of saccadic eye movements using a Taylor series. J Vis. 2017 12 01; 17(14):3.
- A Streaming Motion Magnification Core for Smart Image Sensors. IEEE Trans Circuits Syst II Express Briefs. 2018 Sep; 65(9):1229-1233.
- Naturalness Preserved Image Enhancement Using a priori Multi-Layer Lightness Statistics. IEEE Trans Image Process. 2018 Feb; 27(2):938-948.
- An investigation of perceived vehicle speed from a driver's perspective. PLoS One. 2017; 12(10):e0185347.
- A Compact VLSI System for Bio-Inspired Visual Motion Estimation. IEEE Trans Circuits Syst Video Technol. 2018 Apr; 28(4):1021-1036.
- Robust Object Tracking Using Valid Fragments Selection. Multimed Model. 2016; 9516:738-751.
- Mobile gaze tracking system for outdoor walking behavioral studies. J Vis. 2016; 16(3):27.
- FPGA-DSP co-processing for feature tracking in smart video sensors. Journal of Real-Time Image Processing. 2016; 11(4):751-767.
- Hazard detection with a monocular bioptic telescope. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt. 2015 Sep; 35(5):530-9.
- Asymmetry in the Collision Judgments of People With Homonymous Field Defects and Left Hemispatial Neglect. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2015 Jun; 56(6):4135-42.
- Computer-aided analyses of mouse retinal OCT images - an actual application report. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt. 2015 Jul; 35(4):442-9.
- Evaluation of a Portable Collision Warning Device for Patients With Peripheral Vision Loss in an Obstacle Course. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2015 Apr; 56(4):2571-9.
- Interocular Shift of Visual Attention Enhances Stereopsis and Visual Acuities of Anisometropic Amblyopes beyond the Critical Period of Visual Development: A Novel Approach. J Ophthalmol. 2014; 2014:615213.
- Salient stimulus attracts focus of peri-saccadic mislocalization. Vision Res. 2014 Jul; 100:93-8.
- Trajectory prediction of saccadic eye movements using a compressed exponential model. J Vis. 2013 Jul 31; 13(8).
- The effect of strabismus on object detection in the ring scotoma of a monocular bioptic telescope. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt. 2013 Jul; 33(4):550-60.
- Parallel fast inter mode decision for H.264/AVC encoding. Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation. 2013; 24(8):1443-1449.
- Collision Detection from a Body-Mounted Camera while Walking. 2013 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Workshops. 2013.
- Automatic Calibration Method for Driver's Head Orientation in Natural Driving Environment. IEEE trans Intell Transp Syst. 2012 Sep 21; 14(1):303-310.
- Effects of contour enhancement on low-vision preference and visual search. Optom Vis Sci. 2012 Sep; 89(9):E1364-73.
- Visual search performance of patients with vision impairment: effect of JPEG image enhancement. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt. 2012 Sep; 32(5):421-8.
- Methods for automated identification of informative behaviors in natural bioptic driving. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2012 Jun; 59(6):1780-6.
- Object detection in the ring scotoma of a monocular bioptic telescope. Arch Ophthalmol. 2011 May; 129(5):611-7.
- Recording and automated analysis of naturalistic bioptic driving. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt. 2011 May; 31(3):318-25.
- Development and evaluation of vision rehabilitation devices. Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2011; 2011:5228-31.
- Time to Collision and Collision Risk Estimation from Local Scale and Motion. Advances in Visual Computing: Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium. 2011.
- Inconsistency between peri-saccadic mislocalization and compression: evidence for separate what"" and ""where visual systems. J Vis. 2010 Oct 26; 10(12):32.
- Telescope aiming point tracking method for bioptic driving surveillance. IEEE Trans Neural Syst Rehabil Eng. 2010 Dec; 18(6):628-36.
- DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF VISION MULTIPLEXING DEVICES FOR VISION IMPAIRMENTS. Int J Artif Intell Tools. 2009 Jun 01; 18(3):365-378.
- Collision judgment when using an augmented-vision head-mounted display device. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2009 Sep; 50(9):4509-15.
- The role of peripheral vision in saccade planning: learning from people with tunnel vision. J Vis. 2008 Dec 22; 8(14):25.1-8.
- Applications of Augmented Vision Head-Mounted Systems in Vision Rehabilitation. J Soc Inf Disp. 2007 Dec; 15(12):1037-1045.
- Use of an augmented-vision device for visual search by patients with tunnel vision. Invest Ophthalmol Vis Sci. 2006 Sep; 47(9):4152-9.
- Establishing Mobility Measures to Assess the Effectiveness of Night Vision Devices: Results of a Pilot Study. J Vis Impair Blind. 2005 Oct; 99(10):663-670.
- Registration of an on-axis see-through head-mounted display and camera system. Optical Engineering. 2005; 44(2):024002.
- Evaluation of a prototype Minified Augmented-View device for patients with impaired night vision. Ophthalmic Physiol Opt. 2004 Jul; 24(4):296-312.
- Detection and measurement of retinal vessels in fundus images using amplitude modified second-order Gaussian filter. IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2002 Feb; 49(2):168-72.
- Experimental study on nonuniformity of line jitter in CCD images. Appl Opt. 2001 Sep 10; 40(26):4716-20.
- Optical/digital color photography based on white-light information processing. SCIENCE IN CHINA SERIES E-TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES. 2001; 44(2):140-148.
- Abnormality Detection in Automated Mass Screening System of Diabetic Retinopathy. CBMS 2001. 2001; 132-137.
- Method for the deviation inspection of integrated circuit chip pin based on Harr wavelet transform. Optical Engineering. 2000; 39(6):1712-1716 .
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Long-Term Recording and Automated Analysis of Daily Driving Behavior
Driving behaviors in individuals with visual impairments are not well understood. For instance, it is a highly controversial issue whether people with poor visual acuity should drive with bioptic telescopes.
Dr. Luo is leading a study to address this question. He has developed an in-car recording system that can record video, GPS, vehicle black-box, etc., for months. He is also developing an automated analysis system to select important driving segments from the vast amount of data for manual evaluation by professionals. Selected driving procedures are reconstructed on an interactive interface, which provides detailed information about geographic location, speed, traffic videos, head movement, etc. Watch a video of the recording system in action.
Mobility Assistance Devices
The mobility needs of individuals with visual impairments have been receiving more and more research attention, as it is an important factor that impacts an individual’s employment opportunities and independence.
Dr. Luo’s laboratory is developing technologies to help people with impaired vision travel efficiently, walk safely, and drive safely. With funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, the researchers are currently developing a wearable, collision-warning device for individuals who are blind or visually impaired. (Watch a video of the device.) A rigorous clinical trial study to evaluate its usefulness is ongoing.
Mobile Computing Technology for Visually Impaired
Dr. Luo’s laboratory is developing mobile device (smart phones, tablets Google Glass) based technologies for eye care professionals and individuals with visual impairments. With expertise in image processing, Dr. Luo created a magnifying app with image stabilization capability. (Watch the video.) One of his apps, known as SuperVision+, is already on the market for free. He is also conducting clinical studies to evaluate mobile computing visual aid technologies.
Peri-Saccadic Visual Perception
A stimulus flashed shortly before a saccade—rapid eye movement between fixation points—will be mislocalized. Since the mislocalization is toward saccade goal, it is interpreted as saccades-cause spatial compression (Ross, Nature 1997).
Dr. Luo’s study showed that although a stimulus may be mislocalized, the size is still perceived unchanged. It is suggested that visual localization and perception of object size are separated. This provides some evidence to support the theory of separate “what” and “where” visual systems (Mishkin and Ungerleider, Trends in Neurosciences, 1983). Dr. Luo is conducting research to understand the mechanism underlying the peri-saccadic mislocalization. A recent finding indicates that the mislocalization locus is not necessarily at saccade goal. It can fall on a salient distracter that is far from the saccade goal.
Website
Vision Research and Technology Lab
Current Members of Dr. Gang Luo’s Laboratory
Investigator
- Shrinivas Pundlik, PhD
Research Associate
- Matteo Tomasi, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellows
- Mojtaba Moharrer, PhD
- Cong Shi, PhD
- Shuhang Wang
Visiting Scholar
- Wenbo Chen
Intern
- Anikait Singh
Research Assistant
- Vilte Baliutaviciute
Alumni
More than 15 trainees have worked in Dr. Luo’s laboratory.