title: Influence of adaptive-optics ocular aberration correction on visual acuity at different luminances and contrast polarities.
abstract: We evaluated the visual benefit of correcting astigmatism and high-order aberrations with adaptive optics (AO) on visual acuity (VA) measured at 7 different luminances (ranging from 0.8 to 50 cd/m(2)) and two contrast polarities (black letters on white background, BoW, and white letters on black background, WoB) on 7 subjects. For the BoW condition, VA increased with background luminance in both natural and AO-corrected conditions, and there was a benefit of AO correction at all luminances (by a factor of 1.29 on average across luminances). For WoB VA increased with foreground luminance but decreased for the highest luminances. In this reversed polarity condition AO correction increased VA by a factor of 1.13 on average and did not produce a visual benefit at high luminances. The improvement of VA (averaged across conditions) was significantly correlated (p = 0.04) with the amount of corrected aberrations (in terms of Strehl ratio). The improved performance with WoB targets with respect to BoW targets is decreased when correcting aberrations, suggesting a role of ocular aberrations in the differences in visual performance between contrast polarities.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Optica, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC, Madrid, Spain. susana@io.cfmac.csic.es
authors.forename: Susana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Marcos
authors.forename: Lucie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sawides
authors.forename: Enrique
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gambra
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dorronsoro
mesh_terms: D000065:Accommodation, Ocular; D000328:Adult; D001251:Astigmatism / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D015350:Contrast Sensitivity; D003290:Convergence, Ocular; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D055096:Optical Devices; D012030:Refractive Errors / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D014792:Visual Acuity