Neurotechnology company SyncThink is planning to show how analytics can play a key role in diagnosing concussions and monitoring an athlete’s vision and brain functionality at CES 2019 in Las Vegas in January.
The overall topic of how data analytics can optimize athlete performance will surely be a frequent theme at CES. Tracking improvement is difficult without recording numeric measurements, which is why data-driven analytics has been a godsend for stakeholders across the sports industry. Applying that same idea to brain function is behind what SyncThink plans to demonstrate in Las Vegas.
“There aren’t very objective metrics [for diagnosing brain injuries],” said SyncThink CEO Laura Yecies. “Other parts of the body like the heart have objective things. You have blood pressure, EKGs, blood sugar for the endocrine system. But for the brain, other than imaging, and a lot of conditions don’t show up on MRI or CT scan—there’s nothing objective. So that’s the problem we’ve been trying to solve.”
Founded in 2009, SyncThink’s Eye-Sync platform integrates a Samsung virtual reality headset that can record data with a cloud-based software application to process the information gathered. When a user wears the VR goggles, Eye-Sync can run through a series of tests that track eye movement. One such test shows a red dot stimulus traveling in a circle. As a user attempts to follow the dot’s motion, infrared cameras track the patient’s pupil movement so that SyncThink can measure how accurately the eyes can follow the dot.
A healthy brain should be able to accurately follow the path because the brain can predict how the dot is moving. But after brain injury is sustained, that ability to predict becomes impaired. A person’s spatial perception and timing become compromised after a concussion. A lack of sleep also correlates to worsening the eye’s spatial perception, which is why the Golden State Warriors have used Eye-Sync to monitor fatigue in addition to concussion symptoms.
“A way to measure brain injury is to measure the brain’s ability to predict,” Yecies said. “The eyes are a muscle that’s directly controlled by your brain, it doesn’t have to go through the rest of your nervous system. That’s why the eyes measure the brain really well.”
Eye-Sync’s software platform displays analytics that can also show how an athlete’s eye-tracking performance is progressing during the recovery progress after concussion. About two-thirds of SyncThink’s customers are sports teams—including the Warriors, the Atlanta Hawks, and several collegiate programs through partnerships with the Pac-12 Conference, the University of Texas, and Georgia Tech. The remaining one-third of SyncThink’s client base consists of clinics such as Massachusetts General Hospital and Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Eye-Sync currently costs $6,000, but Yecies says SyncThink is undergoing testing with Magic Leap’s virtual reality headset. Unlike Samsung VR goggles, Magic Leap has built-in eye tracking cameras which Yecies says would allow the retail price of Eye-Sync to drop to around $2,000. “We want to get to the recreational market. But you need the price point to come down, and I’m pretty confident that it will,” she added.
Yecies and SyncThink will be in Las Vegas from Jan. 8 to 11 to present at CES 2019, but the company has already made moves in Sin City. Yecies sent C-level SyncThink executives to Major League Baseball’s Winter Meetings this week with hopes that the next big analytic metric used by MLB teams will originate from Eye-Sync’s ability to track eye movements.
“We have a lot of baseball players in college who will do vision training and measure their progress on our platform,” Yecies said. “We have college baseball using it, but we’re hoping to get into MLB.”
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