Do EnChroma glasses improve color vision for colorblind subjects?

Abstract

The commercialization of EnChroma glasses has generated great expectations for people to be able to see new colors or even correct color vision deficiency (CVD). We evaluate the effectiveness of these glasses using two complementary strategies for the first time. The first consists of using the three classical types of tests-recognition, arrangement and discrimination-with and without glasses, with a high number of individuals. In the second, we use the spectral transmittance of the glasses to simulate the appearance of stimuli in a set of scenes for normal observers and observers with CVD. The results show that the glasses introduce a variation of the perceived color, but neither improve results in the diagnosis tests nor allow the observers with CVD to have a more normal color vision.

Spectral Filter Selection for Increasing Chromatic Diversity in CVD Subjects

“…Together with the previous ones, the transmittances measured from two commercial filters used in previous studies were also included. The models were EnChroma Cx-65 and VINO 02 Amp Oxy-Iso [10,11].…”

“…However, this approach, besides being considerably complex, is still an open problem and there is no clear way to see it done in practical terms. Hence, standard colorimetry was used for CVD observers as it is usually done in the literature [10][11][12]14,18], so that results could be compared between different types of observers and simulations could be computed as shown in Sections 3.2.2 and 3.2.3.…”

“…This viral phenomenon does not go unnoticed by many researchers who study the effect of this type of passive aid from different paradigms [10][11][12][13][14]. Real CVD observers have been used in all this research to study how their color vision changes when the passive aids are used, and if it becomes more similar to that of subjects with normal color vision.…”

“…In addition, some authors have carried out research using computational calculations in a complementary way to simulate the different conditions of CVD [10,11,[15][16][17]. Working with simulations is a very interesting and powerful complement, specifically if you want to determine if a filter is effective or not, since it allows you to study a large number of filters and reflectances representative of a very varied set of real objects, as well as different CVD conditions.…”

“…In this study, we have investigated three types of filters: band-pass and notch whose transmittances have been simulated, and the two commercial models studied in previous research, from EnChroma [11] and VINO [10] companies. Differently from the works cited above, we have considered a huge set of 90,922 filters (see 2.1.c).…”