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Article 1: Optimizing the Structure-Function Relationship at the Locus of Deficit in Retinal 

      Disease by Phu, Kalloniatis, Wang & Khuu (2019)

The article by Phu, Kalloniatis, Wang and Khuu (2019) involves studying the effectiveness of using psychophysical paradigm to understand the structural and functional characteristics in the eye among individuals with ocular diseases. The study used an objective approach of identifying correlations between underlying structure of retina and visual function through a psychophysical paradigm. The study focused on providing a psychophysical framework, which can be adopted to reduce the influence of non-retinal factors on the structure-function relationship. The study had a systematic and organized approach in selecting the participants for the study and also had a well-defined criterion to be met with respect to ocular disease, which helped in arriving at the right conclusions, which are evidence based. The study used different approaches to measure contrast sensitivity in the chosen patients wherein two procedures were subjective, and one was objective psychophysical paradigm, which helped in comparing the conventional and proposed method and identify the advantage of the objective approach. The first approach of static perimetry threshold to carry out functional measurements of contrast sensitivity used threshold procedure to identify approximate level of contrast sensitivity at specific locations within visual field. This method was useful to identify only the reduction in sensitivity with disease process. The second method was of kinetic perimetry isopters and testing procedure was similar to clinical testing wherein stimuli were generated using custom written software. This method had pre-determined value and approach of viewing the target on the screen, which could not provide any strong evidence of the structure and functional relationship of eye as it does not consider the perceptual element of every individual, which might lead to viewing the target at times when it might actually be not visible. The first two methods used static and moving stimuli respectively whereas the third method of using psychometric functions for functional measurements of contrast sensitivity provided a more objective technique. The stimuli in the third method included static, moving inward or moving outward target, which provided more accurate measure of the functional measurement of contrast sensitivity as compared to the other two methods.