A study on disability glare vision in young adult subjects

The full assessment of the visual system must include the evaluation of the optical quality of the eye and neural visual functions. The objective evaluation of the retinal image quality is often carried out by computing the point spread function (PSF) of the eye. The central part of the PSF is associated with optical aberrations and the peripheral areas with scattering contributions. In that sense, visual acuity and contrast sensitivity function tests can be considered the perceptual neural response to those contributions characterizing the eye’s PSF. However, in natural viewing conditions, visual acuity tests may provide good vision while contrast sensitivity tests can reveal visual impairment in glare vision conditions, such as exposure to bright light sources or night driving conditions. Here we present an optical instrument for the study of disability glare vision under extended Maxwellian illumination to assess the contrast sensitivity function under glare conditions. The limit of the Total Disability Glare threshold, tolerance, and glare adaptation will be investigated as a function of the angular size of the glare source (GA) and the contrast sensitivity function in young adult subjects.