Assessment of cerebral visual impairment with the L94 visual perceptual battery: clinical value and correlation with MRI findings

In this article we describe visual perceptual abilities of a clinical population, referred for visual problems to our multidisciplinary team and assessed with the five computer tasks from the L94 visual perceptual battery. Clinical and neuroimaging findings were correlated with the findings on this task battery. Seventy children (35 males, 35 females) constituted our cohort. Age ranged from 4 to 20 years (mean 7y [SD 3y]). Forty children were born before 37 weeks gestational age. Thirty-six children had cerebral palsy (CP), of whom 24 had spastic diplegia, five had spastic hemiplegia, and four had spastic quadriplegia. Three children had ataxic CP. Perceptual visual impairment (PVI) was established in comparison to the performance age obtained on non-verbal intelligence subtests, instead of chronological age. Our results suggest that children with a history of preterm birth and a clinical CP picture are most at risk for a specific PVI. Correlations among other clinical variables did not define a clinical subgroup more at risk. Children with periventricular leucomalacia were almost equally represented in both PVI and non-PVI groups. Normal magnetic resonance imaging did not exclude the presence of PVI. In these children, however, we found another impairment profile, more in favour of dorsal stream impairment.