Publications

Augmented reality (AR) aims to combine elements of the surrounding environment with additional virtual content into a combined viewing scene. Displaying virtual human faces is a widespread practical application of AR technology, which can be challenging in optical see-through AR (OST-AR) because of limitations in its color reproduction. Specifically, OST-AR's additive optical blending introduces transparency and color-bleeding, which is exacerbated especially for faces having darker skin tones, and for brighter and more chromatic ambient environments. Given the increasing prevalence of social AR applications, it is essential to better understand how facial color reproduction is impacted by skin tone and ambient lighting in OST-AR. In this study, a psychophysical experiment was conducted to investigate how participants adjusted colorimetric dimensions of OST-AR-displayed faces to match the color of the same faces viewed on a conventional emissive display. These adjustments were made for faces having six different skin tones, while under different simulated ambient luminance ("low" vs. "high") and chromaticity (warm, neutral, cool). Additionally, participants rated their adjustments for overall appearance match and preference. The results indicate that the magnitude and specific dimensions of colorimetric adjustments needed to make matches varied across skin tones and ambient conditions. The current work is expected to facilitate virtual human face reproduction in AR applications and to foster more equitable and immersive extended reality environments.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the development of contrast sensitivity function (CSF) in children with intermittent exotropia (IXT) over 1 year and to explore the impact of surgical realignment on CSF.

METHODS: A prospective study of 45 patients with IXT (aged 7-13 years) were matched with 30 healthy controls. Patients with IXT were categorized into the surgery group (n = 25) and the observation group (n = 20). Comprehensive ophthalmic examinations, including binocular and monocular CSF (measured by CSV-1000E), stereoacuity, and sensory fusion, were performed at baseline and the 1-year follow-up.

RESULTS: At baseline, the IXT surgery group exhibited significantly worse area under the log contrast sensitivity function (AULCSF) and contrast sensitivity (CS) at several spatial frequencies (SFs) compared with the controls (P < 0.05). After 1 year, the control group demonstrated significant improvement in binocular AULCSF and CS at 3, 12, and 18 cycles per degree (cpd; P < 0.05). The surgery group showed significant gains in binocular AULCSF, CS at 3 cpd, and 18 cpd (P < 0.05), whereas the observation group exhibited no significant changes in any metric (P > 0.05). Three-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), adjusting for baseline CS, revealed significant main effects of the group, SF, and eye condition on CS change (all P < 0.001), with no significant interactions. Post hoc comparisons showed that the control group had the greatest improvement, followed by the surgery group; whereas the observation group remained lowest across most metrics.

CONCLUSIONS: CSF is significantly impaired in children with IXT. The IXT may disrupt the normal development of contrast processing in children, whereas surgical realignment can partially reverse these effects. CSF assessment may provide valuable adjunctive information for the clinical management of pediatric IXT.

BACKGROUND: Enabling women with breast cancer to actively participate in their care requires a better understanding of the interplay between contextual factors and mediators. This research explored the determinants of supportive care experiences for women living with breast cancer in rural communities of British Columbia.

METHODS: The study used a quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional design. A survey regarding demographic, health, decision support, and breast cancer supportive care experiences was administered to 100 participants.

RESULTS: The combination of being less than 40 years old, having an undergraduate education, and being three to five years post-diagnosis is associated with higher (more positive) total survey scores. A linear combination of undergraduate school and health problems post-treatment showed higher medical treatment scores, with R2 = 23%.

CONCLUSION: The findings emphasize the growing need for psychosocial and emotional supportive care for cancer survivors. The results highlight the potential benefits of informed decision-support tools to fortify supportive care, emphasizing the need to facilitate better supportive care services for women battling breast cancer.

RECOMMENDATION: Supportive care plays a crucial role in guiding individuals' experiences with cancer through the healthcare system. Increasing supportive care centres, especially in rural areas, could improve patient-reported outcomes, and experiences, and ensure timely access to care.

Vision can be viewed as a continuous information processing, yet its underlying system properties have not been fully understood. Studies of visual serial dependence suggest that current perception is often biased by the preceding stimuli, raising the possibility of Markov-like processing-where only the previous state (not the ones before) affects the current one. In the current study, participants rated faces on two of three traits (attractiveness, trustworthiness, and dominance), presented in randomized sequences so each rating could be preceded by the same or a different trait. This design allowed us to examine how prior input (the face) and prior output (the perception) influence current judgment. Using derivative of Gaussian, Markov chain, and linear mixed-effects modeling, we found that serial dependence was disrupted-and both memoryless property and Markov assumptions were violated-when alternating between two traits for attractiveness and dominance but not under other conditions. These findings suggest that different facets of (presumably) the same visual computation can exhibit asymmetrical system properties. More broadly, our work shows how serial dependence can serve as a powerful tool to probe the underlying rules by which the visual system integrates past and present information.

The human visual system prioritizes dynamic stimuli, which attract attention and more readily break suppression to reach perceptual awareness. Here, we investigated whether dynamic changes in contrast-either increasing or decreasing-are equally effective in facilitating the breakthrough of suppressed stimuli during binocular rivalry. In Experiment 1a, we found that contrast increases led to significantly faster breakthroughs into perceptual dominance compared with decreases. Notably, increases accelerated breakthrough relative to the unchanged baseline, whereas decreases delayed it. Experiments 1b and 1c replicated the results of Experiment 1a using, respectively, a briefer contrast change (10 ms instead of 100 ms) and partial breakthrough reports, confirming a robust asymmetry in the processing of suppressed stimuli between increases and decreases. In Experiment 2a, random dots moving in different random directions were presented dichoptically, making interocular conflict imperceptible and unreportable. We found that any change in intensity in such rivalry settings-regardless of increase or decrease-promoted perceptual dominance. By introducing motion stimuli into the Experiment 1 paradigm, Experiment 2b demonstrated that the divergence between Experiments 1 and 2 was not due to low-level stimulus differences. Taken together, our results reveal an asymmetric effect of contrast changes during binocular rivalry. This finding highlights the interplay between subliminal sensory processing of contrast changes and conscious awareness, shedding light on developing theoretical models of binocular rivalry.