Abstract
Eye movement is an essential component of visual perception. Eye movement disorders have been observed in many eye disease, and are thought to affect various visual performance in daily life. However, eye movement behaviors of the elderly with cataract are poorly understood, and the impact of cataract surgery on eye movements has not been investigated. In this study, we observed the eye movement behaviors in thirty patients with bilateral age-related cataract while performing three performance-based tasks (visual search, face recognition and reading). Eye movements were automatically recorded by an eye tracker during task performance. We found an overall improved visual performance postoperatively, presented as elevated percentage of correctly identified objects and faces, reduced search time and increased reading speed. Eye movement parameters were found significantly altered after cataract surgery. Fixation count, total fixation duration and total visit duration were markedly increased in the visual search task and face recognition task. The proportion of regressive saccades was obviously decreased in the reading task. These eye movement parameters were found to be correlated with the measures of visual performance. Our findings suggested a potential association between the eye movement disturbance and impaired visual performance, and provided a new insight on the potential usefulness of eye movement as an objective and valid tool to understand visual impairments caused by cataract, as well as evaluate practical outcomes of cataract surgery.
Highlights
Www.nature.com/scientificreports acuity deficit, and impaired performance of visual-reliant everyday tasks[20,21,22,23]
This study included a cohort of 30 subjects with bilateral age-related cataract that undergone cataract surgery
On the basis of no practice effect, our results demonstrated that cataract surgery significantly improved the visual function and real-life visual ability of the patients
Summary
Www.nature.com/scientificreports acuity deficit, and impaired performance of visual-reliant everyday tasks[20,21,22,23]. In investigations of eye movements in glaucoma, eye-tracking has become a tool to evaluate the effect of glaucomatous visual field defects on the functional ability to undertake everyday tasks[24,25,26,27,28]. The altered saccadic eye movements could even be found in glaucoma at very early stage without any detectable visual field deficit[29]. A prior study has detected saccadic reaction time in eye movement perimetry in subjects with various grades of cataract severity, but only found altered saccadic reaction time in advanced cataract (Lens Opacities Classification System, LOCS III grade V) after the cataract surgery[30]. There is no relevant study assessing the eye movement parameters in patients with cataract while performing everyday tasks, or at least surrogates of those in laboratory conditions. We made preoperative and postoperative comparisons of eye movement parameters, and investigated the correlation between eye movement disturbance and impaired performance in cataract
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