Useful Field of View Performance in the Intact Visual Field of Hemianopia Patients

Postchiasmatic brain damage commonly results in an area of reduced visual sensitivity or blindness in the contralesional hemifield. Previous studies have shown that the ipsilesional visual field can be impaired too. Here, we examine whether assessing visual functioning of the "intact" ipsilesional visual field can be useful to understand difficulties experienced by patients with visual field defects.

We compared the performance of 14 patients on a customized version of the useful field of view test that presents stimuli in both hemifields but only assesses functioning of their intact visual half-field (iUFOV) with that of equivalent hemifield assessments in 17 age-matched healthy control participants. In addition, we mapped visual field sensitivity with the Humphrey Field Analyzer. Last, we used an adapted version of the National Eye Institute Visual Quality of Life-25 to measure their experienced visual quality of life.

We found that patients performed worse on the second and third iUFOV subtests, but not on the first subtest. Furthermore, patients scored significantly worse on almost every subscale, except ocular pain. Summed iUFOV scores (assessing the intact hemifield only) and Humphrey field analyzer scores (assessing both hemifields combined) showed almost similar correlations with the subscale scores of the adapted National Eye Institute Visual Quality of Life-25.

The iUFOV test is sensitive to deficits in the visual field that are not picked up by traditional perimetry. We therefore believe this task is of interest for patients with postchiasmatic brain lesions and should be investigated further.