An Assessment of the Contrast Sensitivity in Patients with Ametropic and Anisometropic Amblyopia in Achieving the Corrected Visual Acuity of 1.0

Abstract

Both visual acuity (VA) and contrast sensitivity (CS) are important parameters for measuring visual function. In this research, we investigated the CS of patients with ametropic or anisometropic amblyopia, whose corrected visual acuity (CVA) recovered to 1.0. Fifty-five cases with amblyopia and 22 control cases with a normal visual acuity of 1.0 were enrolled. The CS of the patients whose ametropic amblyopia had recovered to a CVA of 1.0 at 18 cpd spatial frequency was still lower than that of the normal control group under both photopic and scotopic conditions (P = 0.001, 0.025), but there were no significant differences at low- and middle-spatial frequencies. The CS of amblyopic eyes of the patients with anisometropic amblyopia was lower than that of the normal control group at the 18 cpd spatial frequency under photopic conditions (P = 0.005), and at the 6 cpd, 12 cpd, and 18 cpd spatial frequencies under scotopic conditions (P = 0.008, <0.001, 0.004, respectively). The CS between the amblyopic eyes and the sound eyes of patients with anisometropic amblyopia presented significant differences at the 6 cpd, 12 cpd, and 18 cpd spatial frequencies under scotopic conditions (P = 0.025, 0.045, 0.019, respectively). We suggest that amblyopia treatment should involve not only the correction of VA but also the improvement of CS.

Can Psychophysics Be Fun? Exploring the Feasibility of a Gamified Contrast Sensitivity Function Measure in Amblyopic Children Aged 4–9 Years

“…It is further possible that digital assessments of the whole CSF may be able to provide a more detailed and comprehensive characterization of visual impairment than conventional measures of acuity alone. For instance, previous studies have indicated that some amblyopes exhibit selective deficits at low spatial frequencies, independent of acuity (2)(3)(4). The present work is consistent with these previous findings, in that G max (peak sensitivity) did not correlate with a conventional measure of amblyopic severity (based purely on acuity), and may therefore provide additional information not captured by acuity alone.…”

“…Precise measures of spatial vision (acuity, contrast sensitivity) are important for the diagnosis and monitoring of amblyopia. Ideally, the entire spatial contrast sensitivity function (1) [CSF] should be measured, since sensitivity to low spatial frequency information can be affected in amblyopia, independent of acuity (2)(3)(4). Unfortunately, there is at present no effective clinical solution for the routine assessment of CSFs in young children.…”

Development of the spatial contrast sensitivity function (CSF) during childhood: Analysis of previous findings and new psychophysical data

“…This highlights the need to account for age-related variations in concentration (e.g. when setting clinical norms for visually healthy performance), and suggests that it may be worthwhile to explore the use of more engaging, "gamified" ways of delivering CS assessments to young children (Abramov et al, 1984;Wang et al, 2017;Elfadaly et al, 2020).…”

“…In the case of Abramov et al (1984) observed performance was significantly poorer than adults, but the authors dismissed the difference as a procedural artifact. Koskela & Hyvarinen, 1986;Wang, Zhao, Ding, & Wang, 2017), optic neuritis (Zimmern, Campbell, & Wilkinson, 1979), congenital hypothyroidism (Mirabella et al, 2005), retinitis pigmentosa (Hyvärinen, 1983), cataract (Vasavada et al, 2014), corneal edema (Hess & Garner, 1977), and cerebral lesions (Bodis-Wollner & Diamond, 1976) (for an overview, see Milling, O'Connor, & Newsham, 2014).…”

The Characteristics of Visual Function and Intervention in Deprivation Amblyopia in Limbal Dermoid Children After Keratoplasty: A Pilot Study of Adopting Flank-Mask Perceptual Learning

“…However, the middle and high spatial frequencies have been documented to be particularly useful for target detection and identi cation tasks, even in patients in whom visual acuity is not excellent [24]. We deduced that the high spatial frequencies require better visual acuity to recover [25].…”