Abstract
Background: The area of the kinetic visual field becomes smaller as the brightness of targets becomes darker. Additionally, this ability to recognize an object is decreasing depends on age. However, whether not only the target brightness, but also the background brightness will make the area of the kinetic visual field decrease in ranging of age. We aim of our study in to investigate the differences in the kinetic visual field at several levels of background brightness in young and elder participants.
Methods: The kinetic visual field was measured with three levels of background brightness (0.003 cd/m2, 1.6 cd/m2, 64 cd/m2) in contrast ratio (1.4) within younger and elder participants using the Goldman perimeter, which utilizes an electromotive slider to control the speeds of the target’s movement.
Results: The isopter for elder adults was smaller than for younger adults. Additionally there was a significant difference between the younger and elder participants for each level of background brightness when tested by ANOVA. Furthermore the results suggested that the isopter’s shape of 0.003 cd/m2 was smaller, and for 1.6 cd/m2 and 200 cd/m2, the shape was substantially the same. In addition, on the ear side relative to the nose side, the isopter spread largely to the lower area relative to the upper, and this trend seen in elder adults was substantially the same in younger adults.
Conclusion: The kinetic visual field decreased as background brightness in ranging of age. Although previous studies concluded that the eccentric angle of the upper side of the visual field was reduced, this study found that the visual field on the nose side was also reduced. On the other hand, it was found that the reduction of the eccentric angle was less than in the downward visual field. If the visual field is binocular, the downward visual field will be less influenced by aging.
Keywords: Kinetic visual field, background brightness, goldman perimeter, aging effect, isopter, simple reaction time.
Graphical Abstract
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