Visual Perception Lab Report

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Pages: 6

Visual perception is the ability to process information from surrounding environments through the analysis of light refraction from objects. 3 The ability to visually perceive and precisely distinguish between subtle features and structures is the fundamental purpose of medical imaging. This function and acuity can deteriorate with age, potentially affecting the perception of radiologists to provide accurate diagnostic evaluation of images. This essay will provide a general synthesis discussing the mechanisms of the eye, and how age can affect the visual perception and accuracy of analysing diagnostic images.

Anatomy & Optical Processing of the Human Visual System
The eye is a sensory organ composed of multiple structures illustrated in Figure
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2 Accommodation is the ability of the eye to adjust its refractive optical power by altering the focal length projected onto the eye. 2 This occurs as the ciliary muscles relax and contract to help fluctuate lens size to allow the eye to focus on stimuli at varying distances (Figure 4). For example, light rays from objects at close proximity to the eye would diverge away from the retina. Therefore ciliary muscles would contract to increase the curvature of the lens to accommodate to subsequently increase the degree of refection. This process is important in forming sharp, detailed images. …show more content…
5 Early treatment diabetic retinopathy eye charts can also be used to assess visual acuity. A study conducted by Gupta et al. (2007), investigated the feasibility of a newly developed sensitivity of a questionnaire, to assess the sensitivity of assessing and detecting conditions/deterioration of lens accommodation.7 It found that use of the questionnaire provided consistent and reliable results over a duration of eight weeks. However, limitations of this study is that it was only trialed over a short term period, whereby deterioration of visual conditions were not assessed using the questionnaire, and thus a long term trial of the study is required.