Biomedical subjects

E Peli

Publications and source records attributed to E Peli.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

PubMed1996

Contrast perception across changes in luminance and spatial frequency.

The interaction of the effects of luminance and spatial frequency on perception of suprathreshold contrast was studied with use of a contrast-matching paradigm. Four subjects matched the appearance of Gabor patches at different luminances and spatial frequencies. The contrast of a 1-octave Gabor test patch at one of five frequencies [1-16 cycles/degree (c/deg) in 1-octave steps] and at one of seven mean luminance levels (0.5-50 cd/m2 in 1/3-log-unit steps) was matched, by the method of adjustment to a standard patch of 3 c/deg at 50 cd/m2 at a nominal contrast of 0.3. For each block of trials the spatial frequency of the test patch was randomly changed (three repetitions at each frequency per block) while the luminance was fixed. The subject regularly shifted fixation between the two targets in response to a metronome tone every 1.5 s. Contrast constancy was demonstrated across the entire luminance range tested for all but the two highest frequencies. For 8 c/deg the perceived test contrast was reduced only when the luminance was less than 2 cd/m2. For 16 c/deg, perceived contrast decreased linearly (with a slope of -1/2 on a log scale) with decreases in luminance across the entire luminance range. As at threshold, reduction in luminance across the levels commonly available on a CRT display has only minimal effects on low-frequency suprathreshold contrast perception. However, the apparent contrast of high-frequency features, in binocular free-viewing conditions, is rapidly reduced with a local reduction in screen luminance. This effect has important implications for visual models used in image-quality analysis.

Adaptation, Physiological↗

PubMed1996

The necessary field of view to read with an optimal stand magnifier.

BACKGROUND: For most people with low vision, some form of magnification is necessary to read. Using a magnifier reduces the number of letters that can be seen simultaneously (field of view), which has been shown to decrease reading rates. This study sought to determine how many letters are necessary to attain maximal reading rates with a stand magnifier. METHODS: Younger and older normally-sighted and visually-impaired observers read short passages using a fiber optic stand magnifier (taper). The optical properties of this magnifier allowed the field of view to be precisely varied. Each subject read using at least four field sizes (3, 5, 9 and 13 characters visible) while reading speed was measured. RESULTS: Reading rates continued to increase with as many as 13 characters visible, regardless of age or vision status. In addition, reading with the taper was slower for all subject groups than reading without the magnifier. CONCLUSIONS: This study confirms reports that reading rates increase as the field of view increases when reading from a page of text. The need for this large field of view relative to other low vision reading aids (i.e., computer-generated scroll displays) is likely the result of the readers' need to actively navigate across the page of text.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1996

Visually impaired observers require a larger window than normally sighted observers to read from a scroll display.

BACKGROUND: As text is magnified, the number of letters that can be displayed with a magnifier or other reading aid at any one time (window size) is reduced. There is a great deal of evidence that reading rates increase as the number of letters displayed increases. The minimum number of proportionally spaced letters necessary to read at maximal rates from a scroll display, in which the text is continuously panned across a television screen, is not known. METHODS: Visually impaired (VI) and normally sighted (NA) observers were asked to read either sentences or random words scrolled across a computer screen. The window size was varied so that from one to 12 characters were visible, on average, at any one time. Each subject read with six different window sizes within the range of one to 12 characters visible. RESULTS: For the NA group, a window of four to five characters was necessary to read at maximal rates. VI subjects, as a group, required a significantly larger window of six to seven characters to reach maximal reading rates. CONCLUSIONS: The window size requirement for the NA group is close to the size other investigators have reported for a fixed-width font. However, the VI group required a larger window than did the NA group, which has not been previously reported. This requirement could result from the additional stimulation available with a larger window to entrain the eyes' motion when reading from a passively scrolled display.

Aged↗

PubMed1995

Retinal nerve fiber layer changes and visual field loss in idiopathic intracranial hypertension.

PURPOSE: The authors retrospectively analyzed changes in the retinal nerve fiber layer in patients with idiopathic intracranial hypertension and studied their relation to visual field loss to determine the clinical usefulness of retinal nerve fiber analysis in the clinical management of patients with papilledema. METHODS: Retinal nerve fiber layer photographs and visual fields from 36 eyes of 21 patients with papilledema due to idiopathic intracranial hypertension were analyzed for abnormalities in a masked fashion. RESULTS: Nerve fiber layer changes were found in 67% of eyes studied. Superior areas within the nerve fiber layer were affected 5.4 times more frequently than inferior regions. Visual field loss was more prevalent in eyes with diffuse nerve fiber layer loss (89%) than in eyes with slit defects (29%). The location of the nerve fiber layer changes correlated with corresponding areas of visual field loss. Nerve fiber layer changes were as common in mild to moderate as in atrophic papilledema; however, slit defects predominated in patients with mild to moderate papilledema, and diffuse loss predominated in atrophic papilledema. CONCLUSIONS: Changes in the retinal nerve fiber layer observed in patients with idiopathic intracranial hypertension provide objective information regarding the status of their optic nerve and may improve their clinical management.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1995

Suprathreshold contrast perception across differences in mean luminance: effects of stimulus size, dichoptic presentation, and length of adaptation.

Contrast constancy across changes in mean luminance was reported to hold over a wide range of luminances in a few studies and to be limited to approximately 1 log unit in another. The studies reporting contrast constancy over a wide luminance range used extended grafting stimuli presented dichoptically (bright stimulus to one eye and dim stimulus to the other) with long adaptation periods. The study reporting only limited constancy used narrow (1-octave-wide) Gabor patches presented side by side to both eyes with only a short (up to 5 s) period of adaptation. The current study was designed to determine whether differences in stimulus bandwidth, presentation format, or adaptation time could account for the different results reported. It was found that increasing stimulus size had no effect on the results. Dichoptic presentation with either a filter in front of one eye or calibrated screen luminance could account for the differences between the studies. When dichoptic presentation was combined with short adaptation periods (of a few seconds) an intermediate deviation from constancy was demonstrated. This effect suggests that the deviations from constancy demonstrated under free viewing are due to a lack of fast local adaptation and not to long-distance interactions across the retina.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Enhancement of text for the visually impaired.

Previous research has established the benefits of image enhancement by spatial filtering for face perception and motion video appreciation among elderly low-vision observers [Invest. Ophthalmol. Vis. Sci. 32, 2337 (1991); J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 11, 1929 (1994)]. It has also been reported that similar enhancement could increase reading speeds by a factor of 2-4 in the same population [cf. Ophthalmology 96, 115 (1989)]. In our experiments we sought to determine what benefit, if any, was derived from spatial filtering of text for low-vision readers. Results from this series of studies indicate that 66% of patients do increase their reading rate with enhancement, but this increase is small. Change in reading rate with spatial filtering ranged from a 100% decrement to a 125% improvement, with an average 13% improvement. Only 10 of 67 subjects increased their reading rates by 50% or more. The clinical information that we gathered does not allow us to predict accurately which patients will benefit from spatial filtering. On the basis of these findings we conclude that enhancement of text by spatial filtering does not substantially increase reading rates for most low-vision patients.

Adult↗

PubMed1995

Fiber-optic reading magnifiers for the visually impaired.

We describe fiber-optic stand magnifiers specifically designed for use as low-vision reading aids. Application of this technology results in better optical and ergonomic properties. The fiber-optic magnifiers (tapers) provide bright, uniformly illuminated, distortion-free images. The reading material can be scanned without the user's having to bend directly over the magnifier. One can further increase the scanning field by slanting the taper to tilt the image toward the observer. Tilting the upper face of the taper by cutting the smaller lower face on a bias is shown to increase the scanning range substantially and to provide better control of illumination. The scanning range of such tilted tapers is approximately double that of the equivalent lens magnifiers. To increase the contrast transfer through the magnifiers, we have developed lower-resolution tapers with an increased core-to-cladding ratio. The increase in contrast transfer is reported for representative tapers. The lower-resolution design is also helpful in reducing the manufacturing cost of taper magnifiers.

Contrast Sensitivity↗

PubMed1995

Scrolled and rapid serial visual presentation texts are read at similar rates by the visually impaired.

Visually impaired observers read dynamically displayed text faster than text displayed in a normal page view. The goal of this study was to compare reading rates from two dynamic-presentation methods that have been proposed to facilitate reading from computer-based displays. Prior research has shown that both normally sighted and low-vision observers read text displayed to the same location, one word at a time [known as rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP)], faster than a page of text. A similar comparison with text scrolled continuously across the screen also shows faster reading for low-vision patients, but the relative change from a standard page view is substantially less (15% faster for the scroll display versus 80% faster for RSVP). In this study we directly compared these techniques. For those with normal vision, reading from the RSVP display was 1.3 times faster than reading from the scroll display [t(9) = 3.32, P = 0.009]. Although the difference in reading rates for the visually impaired group did not reach statistical significance, as a group they read 13% slower from the RSVP than from the scroll display.

Adult↗

PubMed1994

Image enhancement for the visually impaired: the effects of enhancement on face recognition.

Image enhancement has been shown to improve face recognition by visually impaired observers. We conducted three experiments in an effort to refine our understanding of the parameters leading to this effect. In experiment 1 we found that the band of spatial frequencies between 4 and 8 cycles/face is critical for face recognition. In experiment 2 we found that enhancement of these frequencies and the resulting image distortion actually reduced recognition performance for normal observers. Since the degradation of performance by low vision is larger than the effect of distortion, the enhancement that reduces performance for normal observers may still be beneficial for the visually impaired observer. Experiment 3 found that patients tend to prefer images enhanced at frequencies higher than the critical frequencies found in experiment 1. Such individually selected enhancement did not improve recognition in comparison with uniformly applied enhancement. The lack of an enhancement effect may be due to the small variability in enhancement frequencies selected by our subject population.

Adult↗

PubMed1993

Enhancement of retinal images: pros and problems.

Evaluation of retinal images is essential to modern ophthalmic care. With the advent of image processing equipment, digital recording and processing of retinal images is starting to replace the standard film based fundus photography. The ability to enhance images is cited as one of the major benefits of this expensive technology. This paper critically reviews the practices employed in the image enhancement literature. It is argued that the papers published to date have not presented convincing evidence regarding the diagnostic value of retinal image enhancement. The more elaborate studies in radiology suggest, at best, modest diagnostic improvement with enhancement. The special difficulties associated with the demonstration of an improved diagnosis in ophthalmic imaging are discussed in terms of the diagnostic task and the selection of study populations.

Humans↗

PubMed1993

Contrast sensitivity to patch stimuli: effects of spatial bandwidth and temporal presentation.

Models of the spatial response of human vision are important for applied work, but the available contrast sensitivity function (CSF) data vary widely due to the diverse spatiotemporal stimuli used over the years. To assist selection, this paper: (1) reports measurements of the effects on the CSF of varying the spatial and temporal windows of grating patches; (2) demonstrates that the widely discrepant CSFs from previous studies can be accounted for by using these results; and (3) discusses simple criteria for choosing CSFs for practical applications. CSFs were measured for several combinations of spatial and temporal waveforms, using the same subjects under otherwise identical conditions. The CSF was measured over the range of 0.5-10 c/deg using Gabor-type patches of 1.0-, 0.5-, 0.25-, and 0.125-octave spatial bandwidths using both abrupt and gradual temporal presentations. The results were compared with the CSF obtained with a fixed aperture (4 deg x 4 deg) grating pattern. Increasing the number of cycles resulted in increased sensitivity at intermediate frequencies, changing the CSF to a narrower bandpass shape. For each patch bandwidth, the gradual presentation CSF had a narrower spatial pass band than with the abrupt presentation. The relevance of the large differences in the CSFs obtained with different stimuli to our understanding of visual performance is discussed.

Contrast Sensitivity↗

PubMed1992

Limitations of image enhancement for the visually impaired.

Image enhancement as an aid for the visually impaired may improve visibility of TV programs and provide portable visual aid. This paper describes the current techniques for image enhancement and their underlying models. The limitations of the various techniques and of potential methods of implementation are high-lighted. Initial work in this area was based on a linear model. The finite dynamic range available in the video display and contamination of the enhanced image by high spatial frequency noise limited the model's usefulness. I propose a method to address some limitations of the original model that considers the nonlinear response of the visual system and requires enhancement of subthreshold spatial information only. This modification may increase the dynamic range available by decreasing the range previously used by the linear models to enhance visible details. However, for the modified technique to be most effective, the enhancement has to be continuously tuned, based on the patient's visual loss and the spatial frequency content of the displayed images. The implications of these limitations for the potential implementation in TV are discussed. Implementation of an image-enhancing visual aid in a head-mounted, binocular, full-field, virtual vision device may cause substantial difficulties. Patient adaptation may be difficult due to head movement and interaction of the vestibular system response with the head-mounted display. An alternate, bioptic design is proposed in which the display is positioned above or below the line of sight to be examined intermittently, possibly in a freeze-frame mode. Such implementation is also likely to be less expensive, enabling more users access to the device.

Audiovisual Aids↗

PubMed1992

Differences in tests of aniseikonia.

The New Aniseikonia Test (NAT), a hand-held direct-comparison test using red/green anaglyphs, has several potential advantages as a screener. We compared the validity of the NAT to that of the Space Eikonometer in three experiments: (1) aniseikonia was induced by calibrated size lenses in a double-blind study of 15 normal subjects; (2) habitual aniseikonia was measured with both instruments in four patients; and (3) eight of the normal subjects were retested with a computer-video simulation of the NAT. The NAT underestimated induced aniseikonia by a factor of 3 in the normal subjects and underestimated habitual aniseikonia in four patients. The Space Eikonometer correctly measured the magnitude of induced aniseikonia in the normal subjects. The simulation test did not show underestimation in the eight normal subjects. We could not attribute the NAT's underestimation of aniseikonia to the red/green anaglyph method, printing error, psychophysical method, or the direct-comparison test format. We speculate that the NAT induces a different sensory fusion response to aniseikonia than do the other tests, and that this altered sensory fusion response diminishes measured aniseikonia. We conclude that the NAT is not a valid measure of aniseikonia.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Image analysis of changes in drusen area.

Computerized image processing was used to analyze color fundus photographs of 11 patients (22 eyes) with macular drusen who were followed for more than 2 years (mean follow-up, 4.7 years). Significant changes over time (more than +/- 20% of baseline area) were measured in the surface area of macular drusen in 18 of 22 (82%) eyes. An increase in the drusen area was associated significantly with eyes with mostly hard drusen and an initially smaller drusen area; but a decrease was associated with eyes with mostly soft drusen and an initially larger drusen area (P less than 0.01). The mean absolute rate of change in the drusen area was more than twice as great in eyes with mostly soft drusen compared with those with mostly hard drusen (P less than 0.05). All eye pairs studied showed a concomitant increase or decrease in the drusen area.

Aged↗

PubMed1991

Multiresolution, error-convergence halftone algorithm.

A new halftone algorithm is described. The algorithm is designed for implementation on a parallel architecture in order to provide fast, progressive coding of moderate-resolution images. The design is based on a multiresolution, hierarchical, pyramidal structure. At each pyramid level, the binarized image is compared with the original, gray-tone image over a successively larger window of pixels for calculation of a weighted averaged error. Within each level, selected binarized pixels are tested for possible changes in the binary assignment. The binary assignment is changed if the change results in a lower average error over the entire window. Varying the selection of test pixels can cause the same process to provide clustered-dot patterns and dithering. A comparison of performance with the best implementation of the error-propagation algorithm is presented visually. Quality is compared also in terms of isotropy of the texture and the appropriate blue-noise characteristics in areas of uniform gray tone. The benefits of this algorithm are realized with moderate-resolution display of the order of 512 dots X 512 dots. The processing can be carried out on smaller blocks since the results can be combined without any visible seams or edge effects.

Algorithms↗

PubMed1991

Effect of luminance on suprathreshold contrast perception.

Perceived contrast was measured under natural viewing conditions with the use of contrast-matching and magnitude-estimation paradigms and found to be independent of luminance over a range of luminances from 37.5 down to 8 cd/m2. However, this contrast constancy broke down when the dimmer target was below 8 cd/m2. The perceived contrast of the dimmer target then fell below that expected from contrast constancy. The extended range of contrast constancy previously reported [J. Physiol. 252, 627 (1975); Vision Res. 16, 1419 (1976)] has been thought to imply neural mechanisms with unlimited constancy, but these researchers permitted differential adaptation to the brighter and dimmer targets, which were seen haploscopically (by different eyes). As our natural-viewing procedure ensured that both bright and dim targets were presented to retinal areas in a roughly constant state of adaptation, our failure to find extended contrast constancy implies an important limitation on the neural processing of contrast.

Adaptation, Ocular↗

PubMed1991

Image invariance with changes in size: the role of peripheral contrast thresholds.

The appearance of objects generally does not change with changes in the size of their retinal image that occur as the distance from the observer increases or decreases. Contrast constancy ensures this invariance for suprathreshold image features, but fully robust size invariance also requires invariance at threshold, so that near-threshold image features do not appear or disappear with distance changes. Since the angular size and the eccentricity of image features covary with distance changes, the threshold requirement for invariance could be satisfied approximately if contrast thresholds were to vary as the product of the spatial frequency and the eccentricity from the fovea. This model fits contrast thresholds for orientation identification over spatial frequencies of 1-16 cycles/deg and for retinal eccentricities of as much as 23 deg. Contrast detection thresholds from six different studies conform to this model over an even wider range of spatial frequencies and retinal eccentricities. The fitting variable, the fundamental eccentricity constant, was similar for all three studies that measured detection along the horizontal meridian and was higher for the orientation identification contrast thresholds along the same meridian. The eccentricity constant from studies that measured detection along the vertical meridian was higher than the constant calculated for the horizontal meridian and lower than the eccentricity constant for chromatic isoluminance gratings. Our model and these results provide new tools for analyzing the visibility of displays and for designing equal-visibility or variable-visibility displays.

Contrast Sensitivity↗

PubMed1991

Image enhancement for the visually impaired. Simulations and experimental results.

Digital image enhancement has been proposed as an aid for the visually impaired. The capability of two enhancement techniques to improve recognition of images by patients with central scotoma or cataracts was evaluated using image-processing simulations and direct patient testing. Enhancements and simulations were based on measurements of contrast sensitivity loss for patients with macular disease. Contrast sensitivity loss was measured using Gabor-type localized stimuli and paradigms that are appropriate for analyzing form perception. The simulations using the contrast sensitivity data suggested that patients with moderate visual loss (20/70-20/200) may have difficulty recognizing faces and may benefit from enhancement by both of the techniques used. Ability to recognize celebrities from enhanced images improved for 39 of the 46 patients tested. The improvement was significant (P less than 0.05) for 16 of the 38 patients with central visual loss and for 3 of 8 patients with anterior segment media opacities tested. The simulations suggest that the benefits of image enhancement may be similar or even greater for recognition of other types of images.

Adult↗