Two-Dimensional Biocompatible Plasmonic Lenses for Color Blindness Correction

Color blindness, or color vision deficiency (CVD), is an ocular disease that suppresses the recognition of different colors. Recently, tinted glasses and lenses have been studied as hopeful devices for color blindness correction. In this study, 2D biocompatible and flexible plasmonic lenses were fabricated using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and an innovative, low-cost, and simple design based on the soft nano-lithography method. These lenses were investigated for correction of red-green (deuteranomaly) color blindness. The plasmonic lens proposed herein is based on the plasmonic surface lattice resonance (SLR) phenomenon and offers a good color filter for color blindness correction. The biocompatibility, low cost, and simple fabrication of these contact lenses can offer new insights for applications of color blindness correction.

ColourSpot, a novel gamified tablet-based test for accurate diagnosis of color vision deficiency in young children

There is a need for a straightforward, accessible and accurate pediatric test for color vision deficiency (CVD). We present and evaluate ColourSpot, a self-administered, gamified and color calibrated tablet-based app, which diagnoses CVD from age 4. Children tap colored targets with saturations that are altered adaptively along the three dichromatic confusion lines. Two cohorts (Total, N = 772; Discovery, N = 236; Validation, N = 536) of 4–7-year-old boys were screened using the Ishihara test for Unlettered Persons and the Neitz Test of Color Vision. ColourSpot was evaluated by testing any child who made an error on the Ishihara Unlettered test alongside a randomly selected control group who made no errors. Psychometric functions were fit to the data and “threshold ratios” were calculated as the ratio of tritan to protan or deutan thresholds. Based on the threshold ratios derived using an optimal fitting procedure that best categorized children in the discovery cohort, ColourSpot showed a sensitivity of 1.00 and a specificity of 0.97 for classifying CVD against the Ishihara Unlettered in the independent validation cohort. ColourSpot was also able to categorize individuals with ambiguous results on the Ishihara Unlettered. Compared to the Ishihara Unlettered, the Neitz Test generated an unacceptably high level of false positives. ColourSpot is an accurate test for CVD, which could be used by anyone to diagnose CVD in children from the start of their education. ColourSpot could also have a wider impact: its interface could be adapted for measuring other aspects of children’s visual performance.

Rainbow color map distorts and misleads research in hydrology – guidance for better visualizations and science communication

Nowadays color in scientific visualizations is standard and extensively used to group, highlight or delineate different parts of data in visualizations. The rainbow color map (also known as jet color map) is famous for its appealing use of the full visual spectrum with impressive changes in chroma and luminance. Besides attracting attention, science has for decades criticized the rainbow color map for its non-linear and erratic change of hue and luminance along the data variation. The missed uniformity causes a misrepresentation of data values and flaws in science communication. The rainbow color map is scientifically incorrect and hardly decodable for a considerable number of people due to color vision deficiency (CVD) or other vision impairments. Here we aim to raise awareness of how widely used the rainbow color map still is in hydrology. To this end, we perform a paper survey scanning for color issues in around 1000 scientific publications in three different journals including papers published between 2005 and 2020. In this survey, depending on the journal, 16 %–24 % of the publications have a rainbow color map and around the same ratio of papers (18 %–29 %) uses red–green elements often in a way that color is the only possibility to decode the visualized groups of data. Given these shares, there is a 99.6 % chance to pick at least one visual problematic publication in 10 randomly chosen papers from our survey. To overcome the use of the rainbow color maps in science, we propose some tools and techniques focusing on improvement of typical visualization types in hydrological science. We give guidance on how to avoid, improve and trust color in a proper and scientific way. Finally, we outline an approach how the rainbow color map flaws should be communicated across different status groups in science.

Image recoloring for color vision deficiency compensation: a survey

People with color vision deficiency (CVD) have a reduced capability to discriminate different colors. This impairment can cause inconveniences in the individuals’ daily lives and may even expose them to dangerous situations, such as failing to read traffic signals. CVD affects approximately 200 million people worldwide. In order to compensate for CVD, a significant number of image recoloring studies have been proposed. In this survey, we briefly review the representative existing recoloring methods and categorize them according to their methodological characteristics. Concurrently, we summarize the evaluation metrics, both subjective and quantitative, introduced in the existing studies and compare the state-of-the-art studies using the experimental evaluation results with the quantitative metrics.