Visual acuity and contrast sensitivity screening with a new iPad application

Abstract

We present a new iPad application (app) for a fast assessment of Visual Acuity (VA) and Contrast Sensitivity (CS) whose reliability and agreement was evaluated versus a commercial screening device (Optec 6500). The measurement of VA was programmed in the app in accordance with the Amblyopia Treatment Study protocol. The CS was measured with sinusoidal gratings of four different spatial frequencies: 3, 6, 12 and 18 cpd at the same contrast values of the Functional Acuity Contrast Test (FACT) included in the Optec 6500. Forty-five healthy subjects with monocular corrected visual acuities better than 0.2 logMAR participated in the agreement study. Bland-Altman analyses were performed to assess the agreement and Deming regressions to calculate Mean Differences (MDs) and Limits of Agreement (LoAs). Coefficients of reliability were 0.15 logMAR for our method and 0.17 logMAR for the ETDRS testing protocol. For testing the CS, our test showed no statistically significant differences compared with the FACT at any spatial frequency (p > 0.05). The MDs were lower than 0.05 log units for all spatial frequencies.