Blur perception throughout the visual field in myopia and emmetropia

We evaluated the ability of emmetropic and myopic observers to detect and discriminate blur across the retina under monocular or binocular viewing conditions. We recruited 39 young (23–30 years) healthy adults (n = 19 myopes) with best-corrected visual acuity 0.0 LogMAR (20/20) or better in each eye and no binocular or accommodative dysfunction. Monocular and binocular blur discrimination thresholds were measured as a function of pedestal blur using naturalistic stimuli with an adaptive 4AFC procedure. Stimuli were presented in a 46° diameter window at 40 cm. Gaussian blur pedestals were confined to an annulus at either 0°, 4°, 8°, or 12° eccentricity, with a blur increment applied to only one quadrant of the image. The adaptive procedure efficiently estimated a dipper shaped blur discrimination threshold function with two parameters: intrinsic blur and blur sensitivity. The amount of intrinsic blur increased for retinal eccentricities beyond 4° (p < 0.001) and was lower in binocular than monocular conditions (p < 0.001), but was similar across refractive groups (p = 0.47). Blur sensitivity decreased with retinal eccentricity (p < 0.001) and was highest for binocular viewing, but only for central vision (p < 0.05). Myopes showed worse blur sensitivity than emmetropes monocularly (p < 0.05) but not binocularly (p = 0.66). As expected, blur perception worsens in the visual periphery and binocular summation is most evident in central vision. Furthermore, myopes exhibit a monocular impairment in blur sensitivity that improves under binocular conditions. Implications for the development of myopia are discussed.