Do EnChroma glasses improve performance on clinical tests for red-green color deficiencies?

Pattie, Cat; Aston, Stacey; Jordan, Gabriele

Abstract

We investigated the claims of EnChroma that their notch filters aid chromatic discrimination in color-vision deficiencies (CVD). Few research studies have addressed these claims and reports are still inconclusive, mainly due to small sample sizes. We here add to previous research finding little evidence to support the benefits of EnChroma lenses. Comparing the performance of 86 well-categorized CVD observers and 24 controls on two clinical tests we report no overall improvement when EnChroma lenses were worn. In line with previous studies, our results imply an improvement in discrimination for some colors while worsening discrimination for others. A model was constructed computing discrimination changes for different groups of ideal observers corroborating our behavioral outcomes. Taken together, our results do not support the use of EnChroma notch filters for the improvement of color discrimination in CVD.

Citation

Pattie, C., Aston, S., & Jordan, G. (2022). Do EnChroma glasses improve performance on clinical tests for red-green color deficiencies?. Optics Express, 30(18), 31872-31888. https://doi.org/10.1364/oe.456426

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 11, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Aug 17, 2022
• Publication Date: Aug 29, 2022
• Deposit Date: Nov 15, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 15, 2022
• Journal: Optics Express
• Publisher: Optica
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 30
• Issue: 18
• Pages: 31872-31888
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/oe.456426