A biofeedback-guided programme or pelvic floor muscle electric stimulation can improve early recovery of urinary continence after radical prostatectomy: A meta-analysis and systematic review.

Purpose: Urinary incontinence (UI) after radical prostatectomy (RP) is an early side effect after catheter removal. This systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to compare different forms of non-invasive treatments for post-RP UI and to analyse whether the addition of biofeedback (BF) and/or pelvic floor muscle electric stimulation (PFES) to PF muscle exercise (PFME) alone can improve results in terms of continence recovery rate.

Materials And Methods: A literature search was performed following the PRISMA guidelines.

Reduced visual acuity is mirrored in low vision imagery.

Research has examined the nature of visual imagery in normally sighted and blind subjects, but not in those with low vision. Findings with normally sighted subjects suggest that imagery involves primary visual areas of the brain. Since the plasticity of visual cortex appears to be limited in adulthood, we might expect imagery of those with adult-onset low vision to be relatively unaffected by these losses.

Vision-based Mobile Indoor Assistive Navigation Aid for Blind People.

This paper presents a new holistic vision-based mobile assistive navigation system to help blind and visually impaired people with indoor independent travel. The system detects dynamic obstacles and adjusts path planning in real-time to improve navigation safety. First, we develop an indoor map editor to parse geometric information from architectural models and generate a semantic map consisting of a global 2D traversable grid map layer and context-aware layers.

Rethinking ADA signage standards for low-vision accessibility.

Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and International Code Council (ICC) standards for accessible buildings and facilities affect design and construction of all new and renovated buildings throughout the United States, and form the basis for compliance with the ADA. While these standards may result in acceptable accessibility for people who are fully blind, they fall far short of what they could and should accomplish for those with low vision. In this article I critique the standards, detailing their lack of evidence base and other shortcomings.

Improvements in vision-related quality of life in blind patients implanted with the Argus II Epiretinal Prosthesis.

Background: The purpose of this analysis is to report the change in quality of life (QoL) after treatment with the Argus II Epiretinal Prosthesis in patients with end-stage retinitis pigmentosa.

Methods: The Vision and Quality of Life Index (VisQoL) was used to assess changes in QoL dimensions and overall utility score in a prospective 30-patient single-arm clinical study. VisQoL is a multi-attribute instrument consisting of six dimensions (injury, life, roles, assistance, activity and friendship) that may be affected by visual impairment.

Performance of real-world functional vision tasks by blind subjects improves after implantation with the Argus® II retinal prosthesis system.

Background: The main objective of this study was to test Argus II subjects on three real-world functional vision tasks.

Design: The study was designed to be randomized and prospective. Testing was conducted in a hospital/research laboratory setting at the various participating centres.

Five-Year Safety and Performance Results from the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System Clinical Trial.

Purpose: The Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System (Second Sight Medical Products, Inc, Sylmar, CA) was developed to restore some vision to patients blind as a result of retinitis pigmentosa (RP) or outer retinal degeneration. A clinical trial was initiated in 2006 to study the long-term safety and efficacy of the Argus II System in patients with bare or no light perception resulting from end-stage RP.

Design: Prospective, multicenter, single-arm clinical trial.

An analysis of observer-rated functional vision in patients implanted with the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System at three years.

Objective: The purpose of this analysis was to compare observer-rated tasks in patients implanted with the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System, when the device is ON versus OFF.

Methods: The Functional Low-Vision Observer Rated Assessment (FLORA) instrument was administered to 26 blind patients implanted with the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System at a mean follow-up of 36 months. FLORA is a multi-component instrument that consists in part of observer-rated assessment of 35 tasks completed with the device ON versus OFF.

Long-Term Results from an Epiretinal Prosthesis to Restore Sight to the Blind.

Purpose: Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a group of inherited retinal degenerations leading to blindness due to photoreceptor loss. Retinitis pigmentosa is a rare disease, affecting only approximately 100 000 people in the United States. There is no cure and no approved medical therapy to slow or reverse RP.

Toward a Computer Vision-based Wayfinding Aid for Blind Persons to Access Unfamiliar Indoor Environments.

Independent travel is a well known challenge for blind and visually impaired persons. In this paper, we propose a proof-of-concept computer vision-based wayfinding aid for blind people to independently access unfamiliar indoor environments. In order to find different rooms (e.

Interim results from the international trial of Second Sight's visual prosthesis.

Purpose: This study evaluated the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System (Second Sight Medical Products, Inc., Sylmar, CA) in blind subjects with severe outer retinal degeneration.

Design: Single-arm, prospective, multicenter clinical trial.

Clothing Matching for Visually Impaired Persons.

Matching clothes is a challenging task for many blind people. In this paper, we present a proof of concept system to solve this problem. The system consists of 1) a camera connected to a computer to perform pattern and color matching process; 2) speech commands for system control and configuration; and 3) audio feedback to provide matching results for both color and patterns of clothes.

Accuracy and long-term prognostic value of pacing stress echocardiography compared with dipyridamole tl201 emission computed tomography in patients with a permanent pacemaker and known or suspected coronary artery disease.

Objectives: Myocardial ischemia is difficult to assess by noninvasive methods in patients with a permanent pacemaker. Pacing stress echocardiography (PASE) has been used successfully in the detection of coronary artery disease (CAD). However, there are no data comparing PASE and other methods.

Letter case and text legibility in normal and low vision.

It is thought by cognitive scientists and typographers alike, that lower-case text is more legible than upper-case. Yet lower-case letters are, on average, smaller in height and width than upper-case characters, which suggests an upper-case advantage. Using a single unaltered font and all upper-, all lower-, and mixed-case text, we assessed size thresholds for words and random strings, and reading speeds for text with normal and visually impaired participants.

Serifs and font legibility.

Using lower-case fonts varying only in serif size (0%, 5%, and 10% cap height), we assessed legibility using size thresholds and reading speed. Five percentage serif fonts were slightly more legible than sans serif, but the average inter-letter spacing increase that serifs themselves impose, predicts greater enhancement than we observed. RSVP and continuous reading speeds showed no effect of serifs.

Lapse resistance in the verbal letter reporting task.

Lapses, or misreporting errors, can affect accuracy of threshold measurements. Assumptions about lapse rate, especially in untrained observers, have consequently guided the design of at least one clinical psychophysical test. Lapse rate was assessed using a verbal letter identification paradigm like that used in visual acuity and letter contrast sensitivity testing.

Improving the design of the letter contrast sensitivity test.

Purpose: To develop a small-format letter contrast sensitivity test with improved accuracy, suitable for portable use and near testing, and having a simple and unambiguous scoring system that can be used with reference to existing norms.

Methods: A near test, printed on resin-coated paper and mounted on plastic was developed by using Sloan letters, with 0.04 log unit contrast decrements between each letter and a simple scoring procedure.

Adjustable typography: an approach to enhancing low vision text accessibility.

Millions of people have low vision, a disability condition caused by uncorrectable or partially correctable disorders of the eye. The primary goal of low vision rehabilitation is increasing access to printed material. This paper describes how adjustable typography, a computer graphic approach to enhancing text accessibility, can play a role in this process, by allowing visually-impaired users to customize fonts to maximize legibility according to their own visual needs.

Dipyridamole-induced abnormal Tl-201 lung uptake in patients with normal myocardial perfusion: a marker of increased left ventricular filling pressures.

Background: The mechanism of dipyridamole-induced abnormal increased T1-201 lung uptake in patients without coronary artery disease is poorly understood. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relation between dipyridamole-induced abnormal T1-201 lung uptake and left ventricular (LV) diastolic indexes using Doppler, color M-mode and Tissue Doppler modalities at rest, and at dipyridamole stress echocardiograpy (DSE) in patients with normal myocardial perfusion and LV function.

Methods And Results: 18 consecutive patients (mean age 64 +/- 7 years) with normal myocardial perfusion and increased lung T1-201 uptake on dipyridamole stress-redistribution single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) were included in our study.

Additive value of low-dose dobutamine to technetium-99m sestamibi-gated single-photon emission computed tomography for prediction of wall motion improvement in patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft.

Background: The two most useful methods for myocardial viability assessment are perfusion imaging and dobutamine echocardiography.

Hypothesis: The present study investigated the additive value of a new method, dobutamine technetium 99m (99mTc)-sestamibi-gated single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), which combines these two modalities, to the prediction of wall motion improvement after revascularization.

Methods: Fifty-five consecutive patients with ischemic cardiomyopathy, who were referred for viability evaluation, underwent resting and dobutamine (dose, 5-10 microkg/kg/min) gated SPECT with 99mTc-sestamibi.

Improvement in mitral regurgitation after aortic valve replacement.

Background: Concomitant mitral valve regurgitation is often present in patients with aortic stenosis. The additional MV replacement is associated with high operative risk. Previous studies have shown an amelioration of MV regurgitation after aortic valve replacement but most of the patient groups were heterogenous.

How crowding affects letter confusion.

Background: Acuity for letter recognition is known to be worse when multiple letters are presented with narrow interletter spacings than with wide spacings. How would interletter spacing affect the kind of errors made by human subjects?

Methods: Five-letter strings that were randomly drawn from the 26 uppercase letters of the English alphabet were presented foveally to the subjects. The interletter spacings were 1.

Elicited sequential presentation for low vision reading.

This paper reports on a variant of the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) technique for low vision reading called elicited sequential presentation (ESP). In both techniques, words are presented sequentially at a constant screen location, but with ESP, the reader elicits presentation of each new word by means of a button press, rather than (as with RSVP) being presented with it automatically at fixed intervals. An experiment comparing reading speeds using, ESP, RSVP and a conventional closed-circuit television (CCTV) reading aid showed that for 15 slow readers who were customary CCTV users with low vision, ESP is superior to RSVP and yields reading speeds averaging 47% faster than RSVP--about the same as CCTV reading speed.

Apparent string shortening concomitant with letter crowding.

In our previous studies of the crowding effect, we have observed that human observers tend to underestimate the length of a letter string (the number of letters in the string) when the letters are close to visual acuity, and the interletter spacings are small. In this study, we asked our observers to identify letters in randomly presented four-letter and five-letter strings. We found that, when a priori knowledge of the lengths of letter strings was not available, the probability of underestimating string length increased with decreasing interletter spacing.

Detection and identification of mirror-image letter pairs in central and peripheral vision.

Reading performance is poorer in the peripheral than in the central visual field, even after size-scaling to compensate for differences in visual acuity at the different eccentricities. Since several studies have indicated that the peripheral retina is deficient with respect to spatial phase discrimination, we compared the psychometric functions for detection (D) and identification (I) of size-scaled, mirror-symmetric letters (i.e.