Threshold of luminance contrast and chromaticity contrast for subjects wearing simulated low vision glasses

Abstract

As reported by WHO in 2010, there are 246 million people with low vision (total population in the world is 6,737 million). The proper environment is important for doing their daily activities not only to be safe and convenient but also to improve the quality of life. This research investigated the threshold of luminance contrast and chromaticity contrast for subjects wearing simulated low vision glasses. The subjests are color normal vision wearing simulated low vision glasses with visual acuity (VA) ranging between 0.05 and 0.3: narrow vision (NV), blur vision (BL), occlusion vision (OLS) and combination of blur and occlusion vision (BL-OLS). They took part in series of psycho-physical experiments. The stimuli are achromatic and chromatic sinusoidal gratings of different spatial frequencies and hues. For all stimulated low vision glasses at higher spatial frequencies, the luminance and chromaticity contrast thresholds were high compared to lower spatial frequencies except for blue and red in maxNV glasses. Yellow showed the highest chromaticity contrast threshold and they were not much different for all spatial frequencies. The medBL-maxOLS glasses showed the highest luminance and chromaticity contrast thresholds while the maxNV glasses showed the lowest ones.