Field of vision data helping to track health outcomes

Researchers at The University of Western Australia have designed a new method to extract data on a large scale to assess and track changes in people’s field of vision.

Dr. Siobhan Manners, from UWA’s School of Population and Global Health and the Western Australian Center for Road Safety Research, was lead author of the study published in Clinical & Experimental Ophthalmology.

Researchers collected data from more than 600,000 visual field tests from 92,000 individuals who attended an ophthalmologist or public hospital eye clinic in Western Australia between 1988 and 2022.

The data, which included patient demographics, sensitivity readings and test parameters, was then collated into a single dataset.

“This new single database set is highly representative of the population over a long period of time,” Dr. Manners said.

“It helps fill a gap in population studies and includes analysis of visual field loss and progression that incorporates factors such as socioeconomic status and pre-existing health conditions.”

An aging population is putting increasing demands on the time of health care professionals and the health care sector and tools such as this data could triage and provide prognostic information.

Analysis of visual field defects and loss can provide a quick and cost-effective way of detecting and monitoring disease.

“The new dataset has been linked to other data to investigate how disease and health affects field of vision disorders,” Dr. Manners said.

“It has also been used for research into how likely people with vision loss will fall and injure themselves and how likely they are to crash their car.”