A standardized protocol for quantification of saccadic eye movements: DEMoNS.

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology
• Neuroscience
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Quantitative saccadic testing evaluates neural control of eye movements non-invasively.
• Standardized protocols are crucial for multicenter studies and disease research.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a standardized, reproducible protocol for infrared oculography (DEMoNS) for eye movement analysis.
• To establish reliable outcome measures for multicenter clinical trials involving saccadic eye movements.

Main Methods:

• Development of the Demonstrate Eye Movement Networks with Saccades (DEMoNS) protocol using infrared oculography.
• Automated analysis of saccadic eye movement parameters from 28 subjects.
• Assessment of reproducibility using descriptive statistics and intra-class correlation coefficients.

Main Results:

• The DEMoNS protocol demonstrated excellent reproducibility (ICC > 0.9) for basic saccadic parameters like peak velocity and latency.
• Parameters for more complex tasks showed moderate to good reproducibility (ICC 0.63-0.78).
• Automated analysis provided reliable saccadic eye movement data.

Conclusions:

• The DEMoNS protocol offers a standardized and transparent approach for measuring and analyzing saccadic eye movements.
• The protocol yields outcome measures with excellent reproducibility, suitable for multicenter settings.
• DEMoNS is applicable to studying saccadic dysfunction in neurodegenerative and motor diseases.