DoctorPupil: A Virtual Reality System for Parkinson's Diagnosis Through Task-Evoked Pupil Response

Parkinson's Disease (PD) is one of the most critical neurodegenerative diseases, yet there is no cure for it, and the state-of-the-art treatment is to slow its progression. Thus, the earlier a patient with PD is recognized, the better he can be treated. Our project joins the research effort that aims to support early PD diagnosis by designing a Virtual Reality (VR)-based system to monitor pupil diameter patterns as new biomarkers (e.g., Pupil Light Reflex and Task-evoked Pupil Response) and provide early warning of potential PD onset. A follow-up experiment with 55 participants shows that the accuracy of recognizing early PD from healthy controls could reach 0.8942. Our study shows early results of a promising research direction that leverages VR-based technology to non-intrusively recognize patterns and provide alerts to early PD patients who would otherwise not know their symptoms until much later.