Abstract
Purpose :
Infrared oculography is a noninvasive method of assessing visuo-motor behavior by acquiring time series data. While this technique is widely deployed in eye clinics for improving reliability of visual field attestation and ophthalmic imaging, it is not widely used for diagnostic purposes. The current study aims to curate and analyze a detailed oculography dataset from neuro-ophthalmic patients using novel rapid number reading paradigms. Our goal is to highlight the oculography features associated with each number reading test that best distinguish patient groups with visuo-motor dysfunctions, namely vision loss, eye movement disorder, and Parkinson’s disease.
Methods :
We performed 1059 recordings using 500-Hz 2-dimensional infrared oculography (RED500, SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI), Germany) in 111 participants (healthy controls and patients with clinically diagnosed eye-brain diseases) who have had careful clinical neuro-ophthalmic assessments. We used regularly and irregularly spaced variations of the King-Devick (KD) rapid number reading test (each one 40 numbers per page, 3 pages total) and extracted time series oculography data using commercial software BeGaze (SMI) and Python scripts. Fixation, saccade and blink parameters were analyzed using biostatistical methods.
Results :
Initial power analyses conducted showed regularly spaced number reading paradigms to be good assessments of visuo-motor dysfunction. One-way ANOVAs revealed that significant effects of patient group in 4 out of 13 oculography features. Fixation count, saccade count, total saccade duration and total reading time, were significant for all three KD test variations. Effect sizes were also greater for eye movement disorders (nystagmus and cerebellar ataxia), and Parkinson’s disease (most common neurodegenerative disease with ocular-motor manifestations) as compared to those with vision loss (homonymous hemianopia, severe optic neuropathies), highlighting the efficacy of such reading paradigms in diagnosing neuro-ophthalmic diseases associated with visuo-motor dysfunction.
Conclusions :
The results indicate fixation count, saccade count, saccade duration and total reading time as reliable features for distinguishing the visuo-motor abnormality in patients with vision loss, ocular motor dysfunction, and Parkinson’s disease. Within reading paradigms, regularly spaced paradigms are better indicators of patient group than irregularly spaced.
This abstract was presented at the 2022 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CO, May 1-4, 2022, and virtually.