Abstract
Purpose :
It has previously been shown that watching movies that were digitally filtered to simulate longitudinal chromatic aberration (LCA) transiently alters axial length in young emmetropic, but not myopic, human subjects. To determine whether myopic eyes may require longer exposure times, young human subjects worked on a computer screen for 12 consecutive days that was convoluted with our custom-developed “red in focus” digital filter which simulates myopic LCA (Swiatczak and Schaeffel, 2022).
Methods :
Four myopic and four emmetropic subjects (average age 24±4 years) worked on the filtered computer screen (25", 1920x1080px) for 2 hours per day for 12 consecutive days, followed by 2 days of recovery. During the recovery period, subjects used the same computer for 2 hours per day without the “red in focus” filter. Before and after each 2-hour working episode, axial length was measured with the Lenstar 900 with an autopositioning system (Haag-Streit, Switzerland). In addition, on days 1, 12, and 14, visual acuity and contrast sensitivity in the blue (<490 nm) and the red (>610 nm) were measured in all subjects.
Results :
After 12 days of repeated exposure to the ”red in focus” filter, the average axial length change of myopic subjects was -32±7 µm (p<0.05), with no change during the 2 days of recovery. In emmetropes, no long-term changes were observed (+8±7 µm, n.s.). Accordingly, there was a highly significant difference in the responses between both refractive groups (p<0.0001, Figure 1). Strikingly, repeated exposure to the “red in focus” filter significantly improved visual acuity in red light in the emmetropic group (p<0.05) which returned to baseline after 2 days of recovery (p<0.05). A similar trend was noted in myopes. The exposure to the filter did not alter contrast sensitivity in blue and red light in either refractive group.
Conclusions :
Our preliminary results reveal that repeated exposure to simulated myopic chromatic aberration displayed on a computer screen may have beneficial effects on eye growth in myopic subjects and appears to transiently improve visual acuity in both myopes and emmetropes.
This abstract was presented at the 2024 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Seattle, WA, May 5-9, 2024.