Peripheral Limitations on Spatial Vision
Abstract
This project employs psychophysical techniques to examine the limitations on spatial vision imposed by the first stages in the visual pathway. The appearance of very high frequency interference fringes is distorted, or aliased, by the cone mosaic. Such moire patterns allow us to assess the topography of the cone mosaic in the living eye, clarifying the relationship between cone spacing and resolution. Resolution was also measured under conditions in which only the M or L cones could detect the interference fringe. Visual acuity was little different than it was when both cone types detected the grating showing that resolution is immune to photoreceptor loss under these circumstances. We recently also established that a phenomenon known for 150 years has been misunderstood, and that it is chromatic aliasing caused by spatial sampling by M and L cones. A device has been constructed to provide objective measurements of the off-axis optical quality of the eye and measurements show that optical quality decline surprisingly little across the visual field. In addition, we have taken advantage of an early nonlinearity in the visual system to measure the spatial responses of the earliest stages in retinal processing.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 24, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA250579
Entities
People
- David R. Williams
Organizations
- University of Rochester