The Impact of Field of View on Understanding of a Movie Is Reduced by Magnifying Around the Center of Interest

PURPOSE: Magnification is commonly used to reduce the impact of impaired central vision. However, magnification limits the field of view (FoV) which may make it difficult to follow the story. Most people with normal vision look in about the same place at about the same time, the center of interest (COI), when watching “Hollywood” movies. We hypothesized that if the FoV was centered at the COI, then this view would provide more useful information than either the original image center or an unrelated view location (the COI locations from a different video clip) as the FoV reduced. METHODS: The FoV was varied between 100% (original) and 3%. To measure video comprehension as the FoV reduced, subjects described 30-second video clips in response to two open-ended questions. A computational, natural-language approach was used to provide an information acquisition (IA) score. RESULTS: The IA scores reduced as the FoV decreased. When the FoV was around the COI, subjects were better able to understand the content of the video clips (higher IA scores) as the FoV decreased than the other conditions. Thus, magnification around the COI may serve as a better video enhancement approach than simple magnification of the image center. CONCLUSIONS: These results have implications for future image processing and scene viewing, which may help people with central vision loss view directed dynamic visual content (“Hollywood” movies). TRANSLATIONAL RELEVANCE: Our results are promising for the use of magnification around the COI as a vision rehabilitation aid for people with central vision loss.