Glaucoma-related blindness often results from delayed diagnosis, largely due to the disease's gradual onset, it's early manifestation predominantly in peripheral vision, and the limited sensitivity of current detection methods for its early stages (Stein et al., 2021). This project aims to determine whether early functional loss can be identified using a novel psychophysical task based on perception of contrast-modulated visual stimuli, which reflects the functionality of the retinal neurons thought to be earliest affected in glaucoma (Ramirez et al., 2022). As a proof of concept, this preliminary study will explore both the feasibility and the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of this approach. Task performance will be compared between areas of the visual field classified by standard clinical testing as affected or unaffected by glaucoma. Psychophysical testing will take place at the Centre for Innovative Medicine (CIM) using computer-based tasks administered to patients with early-stage glaucoma, as well as healthy controls.
Glaucoma patients: Adults suffering from early-stage glaucoma with no other history of other medical conditions that affect standard behavioural or morphological tests for glaucoma.
Corrected visual acuity lower than 20/40 as measured with Snellen chart; previous medical, ocular or neurological diseases or deficiencies other than glaucoma (e.g., epilepsy, macular degeneration, developmental dyslexia) that negatively affect visual task performance.