What’s the fastest movement an athlete’s body makes? Think about it for a second. Is it the arm of a pitcher launching a 100+ mph fastball? A soccer player’s foot as they wind up to shoot a free-kick? It’s not what you might expect.
The fastest movement in the human body is called a saccadic movement, the rapid twitches of the eyes as they track an object. And it’s those types of movements that RightEye is studying to increase athletes’ health and skills, on and off the field.
We spoke to RightEye’s President, Barbara Barclay, about how a chance meeting lead to the formation of this Baltimore, MD-area company and the work they’ve done in the years since their founding.
“RightEye’s origins are actually on the tennis courts, where our Chief Science Officer Dr. Melissa Hunfalvay was playing and coaching on the professional circuit. Melissa’s 20 years of experience using eye-tracking technology to assess athletes’ performance led to the creation of RightEye’s initial legacy product.”
With the growth of sabermetrics and advanced biometric tracking across many of the major sports, vision tracking was an obvious next step in the talent evaluation process. Knowing a player’s’ ability to track the ball and players, and how quickly they react to that information can have very real on-field impacts. This is where RightEye’s Performance Vision piece comes into play.
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“Earlier this year, RightEye was used by a number of athletes preparing for the NFL combine,” Barclay explained. “With a RightEye assessment, athletes can receive a simple email report that allows them to provide objective data to recruiters that shows their vision performance capabilities. From a team perspective, RightEye can help coaches and recruiters determine a player’s natural abilities and use that information to determine what needs to be improved to reach maximum athletic potential, and also make better decisions related to team position assignments.”
Once a team decides to add a player to their roster, the work is just getting started. Several professional teams work with RightEye to develop their players’ vision skills, including five in Major League Baseball. Just like any kind of workout, vision training is based on a player’s starting motion tracking and response skills and is customized to focus on certain targeted areas for improvement, Barclay said. One of the benefits of the platform is that unlike more conventional physical training methods, RightEye doesn’t require players to go to the gym or any other special facility. RightEye is entirely cloud based allowing not only easy access to training sessions from around the globe for athletes, but also for continuing research and collaboration opportunities for their ever-growing network of doctors and trainers.
Another one of RightEye’s key offerings is Neuro Vision, a separate platform used to diagnose and treat concussions. Especially in regards to the NFL, this issue has been in the forefront of public attention recently. Concerns about proper diagnosis and recovery times has lead to questions about this complicated medical condition and the long-term effects it can leave on athletes. In this year’s NBA Finals for example, Cleveland Cavaliers’ forward Kevin Love suffered an elbow to the head but returned to the court and played for a few minutes before he was removed after looking dizzy and confused. He was later diagnosed with a concussion and missed the next game.
Many are probably aware of the Smooth Pursuit Test, where a patient is asked to track a physician’s finger movement with their eyes as an on-field test to see if a concussion has occurred. Barclay explained how RightEye’s presence on the sideline can take the guesswork out of this subjective assessment.
“Concussions have become a controversial subject throughout sports for the past decade, especially in contact sports. The injured brain reflects different eye movements than an uninjured brain … The doctor is watching the patient’s eyes during this test, to see if they can detect if the patient’s eyes are moving together. RightEye Neuro Vision is a fifteen second test specifically built to replicate this test using eye-tracking technology to accurately, quickly and objectively determine if the patient’s eye movement is in sync. Even more than initial detection, RightEye Neuro Vision can be helpful in tracking progress in patient healing and throughout rehabilitation programs,” says Barclay.
By establishing baseline vision performance, RightEye is able to objectively determine if a player has sustained a concussion. This objectivity is something that many critics have condemned team-paid physicians for, especially at crucial times in games.
As much as contact sports seek to improve their players’ safety, the risk of concussions will be ever-present. RightEye is working, to ensure that these complex injuries are properly diagnosed and treated to the benefit of players and fans of the game.