Adaptive realtime compensatory feedback to open the light-pupil reflex loop

Integrity of the visual pathway is often clinically determined from response of the pupil to light. The need for more quantitative measurement of pupillary response has led engineers to investigate the light-pupil reflex with systems analysis techniques. The results have made the light-pupil reflex a model of the application of the principles of control theory to physiologic mechanisms. This analysis required that the system be rendered open loop by focusing the stimulus at the center of the pupil. Patients may not be able to restrict their head and eye movement well enough to permit the feedback loop to be rendered open loop optically. Thus, clinical applications of the technique have been limited. A means of opening the feedback loop by using a realtime deterministic autoregressive moving average prediction algorithm integrated into a computer based television pupillometer has been developed. It employs a model reference adaptive scheme to identify the physiologic system, then predicts future values of pupil area to compensate for delays in the measuring apparatus. A computer driven liquid crystal display shutter controls retinal illuminance to render the light-pupil reflex open loop. This technique reduced the mean square error of retinal illuminance by about 75% compared to uncompensated pupil responses.