Horizontal and vertical self-paced saccades as a diagnostic marker of traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Aim: Eye tracking tests to measure horizontal and vertical saccades as a proxy for neural deficits associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI) were evaluated in the present study. Methodology: A total of 287 participants reporting either no TBI, mild, moderate or severe TBI participated in a suite of eye tracking tests to measure horizontal and vertical saccadic performance. Results: The horizontal saccades test offered a sensitivity of 0.77 and a specificity of 0.78, similarly the vertical saccades tests offered a sensitivity of 0.64 and a specificity of 0.65. Conclusion: The results indicated that using eye-tracking technology to measure these metrics offers an objective, reliable and quantifiable way of differentiating between individuals with different severities of TBI, and those without a TBI.

Oculomotor Behavior as a Biomarker for Differentiating Pediatric Patients With Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Age Matched Controls

“…Furthermore, BHEQ did better overall considering AUC, p-value, sensitivity, and specificity of the sub-measures including pursuit test, self-paced saccade test, and fixation test and the BHEQ score has more precision in distinguishing those with mTBI and without mTBI. It is well known that independent tests, such as saccades tests show differences between those with mTBI and those without (Hunfalvay et al, 2019). The same is true for pursuit eye movements (Suh et al, 2006b).…”

“…Weights range from 0.1 to 13% across metrics. More about the individual tests and metrics can be found in published papers mentioned above (Lange et al, 2018;Hunfalvay et al, 2019;Murray et al, 2019). The metrics associated with the BHEQ score all passed reliability standards (Murray et al, 2019).…”

“…Numerous studies have found compromised saccades in patients with mTBI such as prolonged latencies and directional errors on memoryguided and antisaccades tasks and impaired self-paced saccades (Williams et al, 1997;Heitger et al, 2002;Johnson et al, 2015;DiCesare et al, 2017). Both vertical and horizontal saccades have been shown to differ in patients with mTBI, and saccades of patients with mTBI have been found especially deficient under conditions of high cognitive load (Ettenhofer et al, 2018;Hunfalvay et al, 2019). Several studies have also found deficits in smooth pursuits in patients with mTBI (Heitger et al, 2009;Hoffer et al, 2017).…”

Disease Classification Based on Eye Movement Features With Decision Tree and Random Forest

“…Degirmenci et al (2010) performed tests including tracking, saccade, optokinetic, gaze, positional, and Dix-Hallpike tests on patients with vertigo and/or other problems related with equilibrium caused by relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) and found electronystagmographical characteristics sensitive to detecting the vestibular system involvement in RRMS patients. Hunfalvay et al (2019) carried out research focused on people with different severities of traumatic brain injury (TBI) as well as asymptomatic controls. Eye tracking tests were performed to measure horizontal and vertical saccades, and it was concluded that eye tracking methods could be a reliable way to quantify the severity of TBI.…”

“… Hunfalvay et al (2019) carried out research focused on people with different severities of traumatic brain injury (TBI) as well as asymptomatic controls. Eye tracking tests were performed to measure horizontal and vertical saccades, and it was concluded that eye tracking methods could be a reliable way to quantify the severity of TBI.…”