Validity and Repeatability of a Novel Dynamic Visual Acuity System.

PURPOSE: In many sports, athletes rely on visual information from the environment to perform. Some literature suggests athletes have superior visual abilities to non-athletes, particularly on tasks representative of the visual demands of their sport, such as dynamic acuity, eye movement accuracy and speed, and peripheral vision. Other literature suggests there is no difference between athletes and non-athletes, at least when standard clinical assessments are employed. A limitation of the literature is that almost none of the research has been conducted with standardized, validated tools. This is partly caused by a lack of readily available tools to measure tasks representative of the visual demands of sport, and available tests have typically not been validated against current clinical standards. The purpose of this study is to examine the validity and repeatability of a novel visual acuity system (moV&; V&MP Vision Suite) recently developed in the Vision & Motor Performance Lab (V&MP). moV& permits the measurement of many visual function parameters including dynamic visual acuity with predictable, random, and jittering target motion.

METHODS: Twenty-five participants attended two study visits, separated by a minimum of 2 weeks. At each visit, static and dynamic visual acuity was measured using Snellen, ETDRS, and moV& charts. Static visual acuities were compared to determine the validity of moV&, and both static and dynamic visual acuities were compared between visits to determine the test-retest repeatability.

RESULTS: moV& static visual acuities are clinically similar to visual acuities measured with the ETDRS chart (moV&, -0.09 ± 0.13; ETDRS, -0.03 ± 0.11, concordance correlation coefficient 0.726). Additionally, all static, dynamic, and jitter visual acuities demonstrate good test-retest repeatability (Lin's concordance correlation coefficient range 0.451-0.953).

CONCLUSIONS: moV& provides good clinical measures of static visual acuity that are comparable to both Snellen and ETDRS measures. Dynamic visual acuity measures demonstrate good test-retest repeatability.