macular degeneration, macular, diagnosis Hyper What? – My Macular Degeneration Journey/Journal

Hyper What?

Morning! Yesterday I was picked up before 7 to get someplace 4 miles away before 8:30. Today they are picking me up after 8 to get 11 miles away before 8:30. You cannot win for losing!

Anyway, if I bounce up and leave you suddenly, forgive me. The van got here.

Looking at GuideMe again, I noticed one of the things they suggested is self monitoring with a hyperacuity chart. A what?

Acuity is sharpness or ‘goodness’ of a sense. Hyper as a prefix means it has been amp’ed up. That is a good try but it turns out I am not exactly right.

According to Wikipedia, spatial discrimination can be made on a finer scale than what we are capable of with visual acuity. The good folks writing for wiki say misalignments of borders can be detected with 10x more precision than recognition of figures can be made. We are better at lining things up than we are at seeing what they are. Very interesting. Let me read some more.

OK. Hyperacuity appears to be the ability to identify the location of individual things in space particularly as they relate to one another.

So far not exactly coming together here. Let’s check Scholarpedia. They say hyperacuity is used to judge curves and sharpness of edges. Also to judge small differences in depth.

Now that sounds useful. I use hyperacuity to keep from walking into walls on curves and to see if pavement is uneven or just broken. Sounds like a good thing to have.

Apparently though hyperacuity is something you really start to lose quickly when you develop wet AMD. On medblog a doctor posted he was using the preferential hyperacuity perimeter, a test, to detect the start of wet AMD when it was still highly treatable. According to Regillo right now about the best chance you folks with wet AMD have is fast detection and fast treatment. That is where regular testing for hyperacuity comes in.

And that is why the home testing market is starting to boom. If you are able to test twice or three times a week from home, changes can be noticed very quickly.

I heard of an app for self-monitoring of vision functioning in patients with AMD and diabetic retinopathy. There is supposed to be a smart-phone based system that incorporates 10 vision tests in one app. It is called myVisionTrack Vision Monitor.

Looking it up in the app store, I found it in among dozens of other vision measuring apps. I am in the process of downloading it onto my iPad for free. However, an article in Retina Today says the app won’t sound the alarm to you doctor without your paying a fee. Maybe $9 a month.

To actually use this thing and have any results shared at all, it appears you both have to pay the fee and have a prescription. (I just discovered that without the 10 digit code it won’t even allow you to ‘play’ the ‘games’!) The developers don’t want people getting the results and trying to diagnose themselves. All results go to your doctor.

Party poopers. Some of my most accurate diagnoses have come from myself and the ‘Mommies’ at school. (Want to know something about health? Ask a lunch table full of Mommies!)

The Retina Today article also said something about the app not having all the bugs out (nearly impossible when dealing with a variety of people using a variety of devices under a variety of conditions.) It has not been FDA approved. Translation? Don’t expect your insurance to pay the monthly fee.

So this has been my contribution to our understanding of hyperacuity. I have still not found a paper hyperacuity chart. Anyone find one, let us know.

Next: Latin Lesson

Home