Assessment of Sport-Related Brain Injuries with Rapid Objective Perimetry

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Sports Medicine
• Ophthalmology

Background:

• Sport-related mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), or concussion, is prevalent and has lasting effects.
• Current diagnostic methods for concussion lack accuracy, speed, and ease of use.
• ObjectiveFIELD Analyser (OFA) technology offers a potential solution for mTBI assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the OFA for detecting mTBI in athletes.
• To compare the performance of two OFA test durations (OFA30 and OFA30-12) against control groups.
• To assess the OFA's utility as a rapid and reliable concussion diagnostic tool.

Main Methods:

• A cross-sectional study involving concussed athletes and two control groups (putative control and normal control).
• Two OFA tests were administered: an 8-minute test (OFA30) and a 90-second test (OFA30-12).
• Discrimination analysis used Area Under Receiver Operating Curves (AUROC) and Hedge's g effect size.

Main Results:

• The rapid 90-second OFA test (OFA30-12) demonstrated better performance than the 8-minute test (OFA30) in discriminating between concussed athletes and normal controls.
• Hedge's g values for OFA30-12 were 1.22 (acute) and 1.45 (chronic) against normal controls.
• Diagnostic power was reduced when comparing against a control group of athletes who claimed no prior concussion history.

Conclusions:

• OFA perimetry shows promise as a reliable and rapid tool for concussion assessment in athletes.
• The OFA30-12 test is a potentially valuable rapid screening tool.
• Results are not generalizable to the first 72 hours post-concussion due to limited data in this period.