title: Visual performance with real-life tasks under adaptive-optics ocular aberration correction.
abstract: We measured the effect of the correction of the natural aberrations of the eye by means of adaptive optics on the subject's performance on three different visual tasks: subjective sharpness assessment of natural images, familiar face recognition, and facial expression recognition. Images were presented through a dedicated psychophysical channel and viewed through an electromagnetic deformable mirror. Experiments were performed on 17 normal subjects. Ocular aberrations (astigmatism and higher order aberrations) were reduced on average from 0.366 +/- 0.154 to 0.101 +/- 0.055 mum for a 5-mm pupil diameter. On average, subjects considered to be sharper 84 +/- 14% of the images viewed under AO correction, and there was a significant correlation between the amount of corrected aberrations and the percentage of images that the subject considered sharper when observed under AO-corrected aberrations. In all eyes (except one), AO correction improved familiar face recognition, by a factor of x1.13 +/- 0.12 on average. However, AO correction did not improve systematically facial expression recognition.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Optica, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC, Madrid, Spain. lucie@io.cfmac.csic.es
authors.forename: Lucie
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sawides
authors.forename: Enrique
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gambra
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Pascual
authors.forename: Carlos
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dorronsoro
authors.forename: Susana
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Marcos
mesh_terms: D000222:Adaptation, Physiological / Q000502:physiology*; D000328:Adult; D001251:Astigmatism / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D005139:Eyeglasses; D006801:Humans; D012372:ROC Curve; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult