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Updated: May 24, 2026
Investigating the Deployment of Visual Attention Before Accurate and Averaging Saccades via Eye Tracking and Assessment of Visual Sensitivity
Published on: March 18, 2019
[A pilot study on characteristics of microsaccadic eye-movements in anisometropic amblyopia]
Xue-feng Shi1, Kan-xing Zhao, Li-Min Xu
1Clinical College of Ophthalmology of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin Eye Hospital and Institute, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, Tianjin 300020, China.
Objective:
To quantitatively investigate the characteristics of the microsaccadic eye-movements in anisometropic amblyopia and to evaluate the using value of high-speed eye-movement recording in objective and quantitative evaluation and diagnosis of amblyopia.
Methods:
From September in 2010 to March in 2011, 19 cases of anisometropic amblyopic patients (19 amblyopic eyes as group AM and 19 their sound eyes as group AS) and 19 cases of subjects with normal corrected visual acuities (19 dominant eyes as group ND and 19 non-dominant eyes as group NN) were recruited from the outpatient clinic at Tianjin Eye Hospital. A high-speed eye-movement recording system was used to monocularly record the fixational eye-movements of subjects' both eyes. A Matlab routine was used to detect and analyze the microsaccadic components of eye-movement waveforms. The microsaccadic amplitudes, peak velocities, occurrence rates, inter-microsaccadic intervals, cumulative probabilities of all groups were analyzed and compared using Origin8.0 and Matlab2008 statistics toolbox.
Results:
The mean microsaccadic amplitude of group AM (0.76 ± 0.07)° was larger than groups AS, ND and NN (F = 49.95, P = 0.000). The mean peak velocity of group AM (79.72 ± 5.64)°/s was faster than groups AS, ND and NN (F = 4.93, P = 0.004). The mean occurrence rate of group AM (1.52 ± 0.08) Hz was less than groups AS, ND and NN (F = 120.39, P = 0.000). The mean inter-microsaccadic interval of group AM (537.40 ± 65.47) ms was longer than groups AS, ND and NN (F = 4.41, P = 0.007). The amplitude dependent cumulative probability curve of group AM shifted to right compared with other groups and its amplitude 0.67° ± 0.06° at half cumulative probability was obviously increased compared with other groups (F = 203.05, P = 0.000).
Conclusion:
Microsaccadic amplitude, peak velocity, occurrence rate, inter-microsaccadic interval and cumulative probability could be used as the parameters for objective and quantitative evaluation of eye-movement function in amblyopia. High-speed eye-movement recording could provide useful assistance in evaluation of eye-movements in amblyopic patients.
