The importance of vision in life is unquestionable. It is because of this that optometry, as a science of vision focused in measurement and analysis of visual function, has been developing techniques and instruments to evaluate its functionality in various contexts.
Sport has become a social phenomenon, as evidenced by an increasing trend towards active participation, both professionally and recreationally. In order to enhance athletic performance, many have looked towards the sciences (medicine, biomechanics, psychology) for answers. With the specialization of sports vision, optometry has been particularly useful. The importance of the science of vision relating to sports is easily justified by considering that, in general, vision plays a dominant role in athletic success since the majority of external stimuli that athletes have to react to come through the visual system.
One of the most critical areas that Sports Vision incorporates is the specific screening of visual capacities related to sports performance.
If we consider the dynamic characteristics of most sporting modalities that generally involve constant environmental changes, sudden and fast movements of players and ball, speed, etc., we have to accept the premise that action sports require visual performance evaluation that is different from normal vision testing, since routine testing only samples static vision. Assessment of specific sports-related visual abilities includes peripheral vision, visual reaction time or dynamic visual acuity. In reference to the evaluation of dynamic visual acuity, defined as the ability to resolve a target under conditions of relative motion between the observer and the test stimulus, it must be noted that methods developed to date for its measurement have not been, in general, psychometrically validated, and are too cumbersome and unwieldy to find a place in clinical practice or in field situations.
This lack of proper equipment explains much the difficulty of establishing objective, precise and reliable measurements of a visual skill, considered, not only from the sporting context but also from road safety or aircraft operating, as one of the most predictive of real-world task performances, especially in dynamic conditions."
Additionally, the need to improve our daily work giving visual attention to elite athletes in the Olympic Training Centre in Sant Cugat del Vallés has led us to develop this doctoral dissertation, with the design of the DinVA 3.0., a computer assisted test for the measurement of dynamic visual acuity.
The efficacy of our instrument has been supported by four experimental studies. The first three, included into the psychophysics context, have allowed us to find the legitimacy of the DinVA test measurement by establishing its construct validity, as well as internal and temporal consistency. The last experiment is a differential study where we compared the results of dynamic visual acuity obtained by a sample of elite water polo players and a group of totally sedentary students of Optometry.
The obtained results have shown that speed, contrast and direction of displacement of the stimulus significantly affect dynamic visual acuity, supporting the construct validity of the DinVA3.0.
Additionally, we have verified that our instrument to measure dynamic visual acuity has a high degree of internal validity, as well as a high test-retest reliability of the obtained measures.
Finally, we have been able to establish that athletic training seems to improve dynamic visual acuity.
In conclusion, with this doctoral dissertation we aim at offering both, clinicians and researchers, a standardized and typified instrument that allows a solid and specific measure of dynamic visual acuity depending on the application context. It is easy to use, offers the possibility of training, and does not require more equipment than something so common and ubiquitous as a computer.