Abstract
In clinical vision-science, we currently lack a robust, child-friendly measure of the Contrast Sensitivity Function (CSF). Traditional psychophysical techniques (e.g., Transformed Staircases; Method of Constant Stimuli) are too slow, and are prone to be misled by lapses. Recently, Bayesian adaptive estimation has been suggested as a potential solution (e.g., the "qCSF"). Here, we evaluate a novel implementation of Bayesian adaptive CSF estimation, using QUEST+. We implemented two versions of the QUEST+ method: (1) with prior assumptions about the shape of CSF, and (2) without prior assumptions about the shape of CSF (i.e., flat prior assumption). To assess our test's accuracy, we asked 41 4-14-year-old Children and 13 adults to complete the two versions of our QUEST+ CSF tests and an adaptive staircase CSF test. There was a good correspondence in contrast sensitivities (i.e., the peak of the CSF curve) measured with QUEST+ and the staircase. In addition, there were no significant differences between estimates from the two QUEST+ methods. In a second experiment, we assessed test-retest reliability by asking 18 6-10-year-old children and 15 adults to complete each test twice. All methods exhibited similar test-retest reliability as indicated by Bland-Altman analyses. Finally, we performed an age comparison of contrast sensitivity across children. This revealed a ~1.5 dB/year increase between 4-14 years. However, this developmental effect was small relative to the individual variability across subjects (i.e., between-subjects, contrast sensitivity ranged from 10 to 44 dB). These results show that it is feasible to obtain accurate, fast, and reliable measures of the CSF in children using the QUEST+ method. This offers potential improvements over gold standard tests currently used for diagnosis and treatment outcome of childhood eye disease.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018