An investigation into the variation of human contrast sensitivity with age and ocular pathology.

The contrast sensitivities to sine-wave grating stimuli were measured for 36 observers with ages in the range 8 to 67 years. Thirty-one observers had normal, healthy vision while 4 were suffering from diabetic retinopathy and 1 had a early lens opacities and macular degeneration. The younger members of the group with normal vision were less sensitive to low spatial frequencies and the older members were less sensitive to high spatial frequencies than the middle-aged observers. The 5 observers with pathological conditions were less sensitive to most grating stimuli than those with normal vision.