Abstract

Many people with low vision can read with a modest amount of magnification but are unable to recognize the faces of their friends and family. In reviewing the records of 1000 consecutive patients seen at the Wilmer Low Vision Clinic, we found that 54% of the patients reported extreme difficulty in recognizing faces. Even among low-vision patients with relatively good visual acuity, face recognition remains a problem. 47% of the patients with acuities better than 20/60 reported difficulty recognizing faces. Several investigators have suggested that reduced contrast sensitivity may be an important factor in limiting performance in everyday tasks such as face recognition. This has led to the proposal that images should be pre-filtered to compensate for the reduction in contrast sensitivity of individual low-vision observers.

© 1990 Optical Society of America