Advancing tools to assess visual crowding in healthy vision and glaucoma
Advancing tools to assess visual crowding in healthy vision and glaucoma
Seeing the world clearly is not only about sharp eyesight. Much of what we do every day, reading street signs, finding a friend in a crowd, or safely navigating busy environments, depends on how well we can recognize objects in our peripheral vision. In many people, including those with eye diseases such as glaucoma, this ability is limited by a phenomenon called visual crowding: when objects are close together, they become difficult to identify, even if they are not blurred. Although crowding has major consequences for daily life, it is rarely measured in clinical practice, largely because existing tests are slow or cumbersome.
This thesis of Dilce Tanriverdi set out to improve how we measure crowding and to understand when and why it changes. I developed several new, rapid and more engaging methods that use eye tracking and continuous measurements to assess peripheral vision. These tools make it possible to measure crowding rapidly instead of lengthy test sessions. I then investigated whether crowding is affected by factors such as light level, showing that crowding remains remarkably stable across bright and dim environments. Finally, I explored how crowding behaves in glaucoma, a disease that damages the optic nerve and leads to blindness if untreated. My findings suggest that the increased crowding seen in early glaucoma may provide insights into functional difficulties that are not captured by standard clinical tests.
Overall, this work advances our ability to measure and understand peripheral vision, offering new possibilities for earlier and more meaningful assessment of visual disorders like glaucoma.