Archetypal Analysis Reveals Consistent Visual Field Patterns for Stimulus Size III and Size Modulation Perimetry in...

Area of Science:

• Ophthalmology
• Neuroscience
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Optic nerve disorders lead to distinct visual field (VF) patterns.
• Size modulation perimetry (SMP) maintains retest variability with increasing VF damage, unlike standard automated perimetry (SAP).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if VF testing using stimulus size III and SMP reveal analogous patterns.
• To assess the potential interchangeability of size III and SMP in clinical practice.

Main Methods:

• Analyzed 274 same-day VF pairs from 83 glaucoma patients.
• Applied archetypal analysis (AA) to identify characteristic VF patterns (archetypes) from size III and SMP data.
• Evaluated both absolute VF patterns and longitudinal changes using cosine similarity.

Main Results:

• Absolute size III and SMP VFs showed overlapping patterns, with 95% of archetypes having a cosine similarity of ≥0.50.
• Change archetypes exhibited lower similarity (30% with cosine similarity ≥0.50), but some revealed similar underlying defects.

Conclusions:

• Archetypal analysis consistently identified comparable VF defect patterns between size III and SMP in glaucoma.
• Absolute size III patterns closely aligned with SMP, while patterns of change showed partial agreement.