Expanded COBRA Oculometrics (ECO) to Include Perimetry and Directional Assessment of Visual and Visuomotor Performance

Expanded COBRA Oculometrics (ECO) expands the oculometric assessment into the peripheral visual field and sub-divides the visual field into sub-regions defined by their eccentricity (ring) and angular range (sector) for more direct comparison with current state-of-the-art clinical imagining (e.g., OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography)) and functional testing (e.g., perimetry) methodologies. ECO improves on COBRA in two ways, 1) ECO probes multiple rings at multiple eccentricities (nominally at ~3 and ~6 deg of eccentricity to correspond to classic OCT imaging measures) and 2) ECO subdivides the conventional COBRA analysis into angular sectors (nominally into Nasal, Temporal, Superior, and Inferior quadrants again to correspond to classic OCT imaging measures but also potentially into more refined octants) to sub-sample the retina (monocularly) or the visual field (binocularly), thus parceling the data into smaller subregions organized in polar coordinates to better correspond to classic OCT imaging and other clinical imaging measures. This enables ECO to detect spatially localized impairments that would otherwise be blurred out by larger healthy regions of the retina/brain and allows for direct comparison with clinical OCT results and other clinical imaging systems. ECO sectors/rings could be tailored to enable comparison with brain MRI/A (Magnetic Resonance Imaging/Angiography) or CAT (Computer Aided Tomography) commonly used in neurology clinics so that the structural damage or pathology revealed by these standard imaging techniques can be correlated to actual function loss in corresponding sub-regions of the visual field in support of both clinical and research applications. Injury and disease can cause localized impairment of the retina and visual cortex. However, standard functional clinical assessment of sub-regions of the visual field and retina employ a crude spatial measure, called perimetry, that is insensitive to milder localized defects and vulnerable to eye-movement artifacts. NASA Ames Research Center’s current patented suite of COBRA oculometrics (TOP2-268) provides assessment of general retinal/visual health and performance for the entire visual field or retina, and would not detect defects limited to a small specific location on the retina or in the visual field. NASA Ames has developed a novel Expanded COBRA Oculometrics (ECO), which enhances COBRA by systematically exploring “localized” impairment of specific portions of the retina or visual field that could be the result of patchy retinal or brain degenerative disease, brain tumors, strokes, etc., and by extending the range of retina or visual field tested using a set of concentric rings divided up into octants (or quadrants).