Seventeen pairs of racquetball eyewear were tested for distortion and loss of field. Four of the seventeen eyewear produced twenty five percent or greater loss of field. Two of the eyewears produced less than one percent loss of field. None produced measurable distortion utilized by our measurement techniques

Jankowski, Christen

Picard, John E

English

CommonKnowledge

Pacific University 
CommonKnowledge 
College of Optometry Theses, Dissertations and Capstone Projects 
5-1984 
Consumer's choice in protective eyewear 
John E. Picard 
Pacific University 
Christen Jankowski 
Pacific University 
Recommended Citation 
Picard, John E. and Jankowski, Christen, "Consumer's choice in protective eyewear" (1984). College of 
Optometry. 702. 
https://commons.pacificu.edu/opt/702 
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Consumer's choice in protective eyewear 
Abstract 
Seventeen pairs of racquetball eyewear were tested for distortion and loss of field. Four of the seventeen 
eyewear produced twenty five percent or greater loss of field. Two of the eyewears produced less than 
one percent loss of field. None produced measurable distortion utilized by our measurement techniques. 
Degree Type 
Thesis 
Degree Name 
Master of Science in Vision Science 
Committee Chair 
Norman S. Stern 
Keywords 
high velocity sports, distortion, visual field 
Subject Categories 
Optometry 
This thesis is available at CommonKnowledge: https://commons.pacificu.edu/opt/702 
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Consumer's Choice in Protective Eyewear 
In Partial Fulfillment of 
the Requirements for 
Doctor of Optometry Degree 
Pacific University College of Optometry 
May 1984 
By 
John E. ~icard 
Christen Jankowski 
Advised by NormanS. Stern, O.D., Ph.D. 
Consumer's Choice in Protective Eyew-ear 
Grade _k_ 
By 
John E. Picard 
Christen Jankowski 
Advisor 
Norma~D., Ph.D. 
I 
Acknowledgements 
Our special thanks to the folllowing: 
Dr. Norman Stern, who provided the guidance and stimu-
lation of ideas which kept this paper going. Moreover, we'd 
like to give him our special thanks for the time, patience, 
and consideration that he has shown us. In all aspects, he 
is a true professional! 
Penn Rubber Company, for providing equipment in support 
of our efforts. 
Abstract 
Seventeen pairs of racquetball eyewear were tested for 
distortion and loss of field. Four of the seventeen eyewear 
produced twenty five percent or greater loss of field. Two 
of the eyewears produced less than one percent loss of field. 
None produced measurable distortion utilized by our measure-
ment techniques. 
Key words: high velocity sports, distortion, visual field 
Consumer's Choice in Protective Eyewear 
Introduction 
In the past fifteen years, there has been a large 
increase in the number of health oriented people. One of 
the consequences of this, is a growing number of participants 
in high velocity racquet sports. High velocity sports are 
those such as ratquetball, handball, squash, and tennis, in 
which the ball travels upwards to ninety miles per hour. It 
has been estimated that the number of racquetball players 
alone has increased from 170,000 in 1972 to 1,400,000 in 
1975. 1 Hirschfelder has estimated 30 million people play 
racquet sports. With this tremendous gain in the number of 
players, there has been an increase in the number of eye 
injuries produced from such sports. 2 ' 7 ' 8 In 1980, over 4,000 
people reported to emergency rooms with racquet sports 
related injuries. The greatest rise in eye injuries has come 
from increased participation in racquetball, because the ball 
has a high peak velocity. However, ·this is not the only 
hazard since hitting oneself or being hit with the racquet 
is a distinct possibility. Insurance companies are beginning 
to recognize this increase in injuries and are strongly sug-
gesting that racquet clubs insist players wear eye protection. 
If the clubs do not enforce such a policy, they may end up 
paying prohibitive liability insurance premiums. 5 
-1-
-- -,.- -
, 
2 
Eye protectors are especially ~necessary for racquet 
games, such as tennis, racquetball, . ~nd squash. The National 
SocietytoPrevent Blindness says that racquet sports are the 
leading catalysts to eye injuries. The eyeguard should opti-
mally not only protect the eyes, but the temple area of the 
head as well. One of the problems cited in the Pacific 
University College of Optometry research thesis titled "The 
12 Consumer's Choice in Athletic Eyewear' ' . is that the optimum 
eyewear protection device may produce both distortion and/or 
loss of the visual field. What we have attempted to do in 
our study is to evaluate seventeen popular eyewear devices 
and determine objectively the amount of field loss and distor-
tion that each one produced. 
Methodology 
The seventeen pairs of eyewear were subdivided into four 
categories. The four categories were predetermined by pre-
vious research done at Pacific University College of Opto-
12 
metry. The categories were: 
1. Protectors with lenses and temple bows 
molded into one piece. 
2. Protectors that are lensless faceguards. 
3. Protectors that are designed to be worn 
over street glasses. 
4. Protectors with lenses, either plano or 
prescription (approximately conventional 
eyeglasses). 
The eyewear was held in place by a device constructed at 
Pacific University that is normally used to instruct students 
in all aspects of frame adjustment. A Pentax Spotmatic 
3 
camera was mounted on a tripod behipd the protective eye-
wear. A wide angle lens (28 mm) was mounted on the camera 
body and positioned fifteen millimeters behind the eyewear 
in an attempt to most closely approximate the human eye 
relative to the spectacle plane. The purpose of the camera 
was to give an objective measure of the distortion in the 
field and the decrease in the natural visual field. A grid 
consisting of equally spaced vertical and horizontal lines 
was focused at the near point of the lens. 
Three pictures of the grid were taken monocularly 
without any eyewear in front of the camera. After counting 
the number of clear grid boxes that were present in all three 
pictures, an average was taken~ This average value became 
our standard. 
For our study, the standard grid consisted of two 
hundred sixteen clear boxes. Each of the seventeen eyewears 
was in turn placed in front of the camera (monocularly) and 
the grid was photographed three times. An average was taken, 
from the three photos per eyewear of the number of grid 
boxes missing. (In our study, halfor.more occlusion of a box 
constituted total field loss of that box.) The _average num-
ber was then divided by the total number of clear boxes in 
the grid (216) and was multiplied by one hundred in order to 
obtain a percentage of field loss. To determine percentages 
of distortion, each of the three photos per eyewear was 
made into a transparency by a Thermofax process. These in 
turn were superimposed on a transparency of the standard 
4 
grid. In each superimposed photo, ~ boxes that were not con-
gruent with the standard grid were counted. All three 
countings (per eyewear) were totaled. A mean average (per 
eyewear) was taken and divided by the number of boxes in 
the standard grid. This was then multiplied by one hundred 
to give a percentage of the distortion of the eyewear. 
Results 
The results are listed below in tabular form. 
Name of Eyewear Category # Missed Boxes % of Field 
ProTec PTE 500 2 53 25 
Criss Yank Sportsman 2 52 24 
Criss S-10 2 48 22 
Criss All-Arner (Blk) 2 38 18 
Criss All-Arner (Wht) 2 20 9 
Ektalon Court Goggles 1 11 5 
ProTec Eye Armor 2 0 0 
Pioneer Sports Specs 1 10 15 
Ektalon Eye Sentry 4 3 1 
PC Sportique Dix 4 6 3 
Carrera Viper II 4 50 24 
Uvex Sports Goggle 3 46 21 
B&L Action Eyes 4 7 3 
Rec Specs I-S 2 37 17 
Rec Specs I-L 1 60 28 
Mityguard-G 3 68 32 
Rainbo All Sport 2 60 28 
It can be seen from the table above, four of the eye-
wears produced twenty five percent or greater loss of visual 
field. These were the ProTec PTE 500, Rec Specs I-L, 
Loss 
5 
Mityguard-G, and the Rainbo All Sport. Two of the eyewears 
produced field losses of one percent or less. These were 
the ProTec Eye Armor and the Ektalon Eye Sentry. None of 
the eyewear produced measurable distortion of the grid boxes 
as measured by our technique. 
Discussion 
One of the interesting points is that the loss of the 
visual field does not appear to be category dependent, but 
rather uniformly distributed. This would suggest that one 
particular category of eyewear does not appear to be better 
than another cat~gory. However, certain manufacturers 
eyewear in each category have a much larger field of view 
than the others. We don't know at this time what constitutes 
a significant loss of visual field, and how this effects the 
reaction time of the player. Further studies need to be 
conducted in order to determine how the decrease in the visual 
field correlates with the players performance. Since it 
stands to reason that the better racquet sports player hits 
the ball as far from center from the opponent as possible, 
this may require the use of the peripheral field in order 
to detect ball movement. Another finding is that there was 
no distortion, either barrel or pincushion, evidenced in 
the developed photographs. This is not to imply that such 
distortions do not exist, since the works of Matsuura and 
12 Thompson give subjective evidence of such. Perhaps other 
testing methods of a more sensitivie nature could be employed 
to detect the amount of distortion generated. 
; 
6 
Bibliography 
1. Singerman, P. Racquetball: the .hottest new game. 
Esquire, pp. 78-81, 1978. 
2. Vinger, Paul F. Sports eye injuries - a preventable 
disease. Ophthalmology, February 1981. 
3. Elmstrom, George. Advanced Management Strategies for 
Optometrists, p. 117, 1981. 
4. Stone, Lois Greene. Eye-Eye, Sir. World Tennis, p. 17, 
February 1983. 
5. Statement by International Collegiate Racquetball Asso-
ciation. 
6. Eye protector study begun. Optometric Management, p. 5, 
March 1983. 
7. Vinger, P.F. and Tolbin, D.W. Racquet sports an ocular 
hazard. JAMA, Vol. 239, pp. 2575-2577, 1978. 
8. Stern, Norman S. The effects of racquetball impact on 
spectacles and lenses. Optometric Monthly, pp. 343-345, 
June 1978. 
9. Frames catalog, December 1983. 
10. Easterbrook, W. B&L Sports Vision Newsletter. Phys. 
and Sports Med., April/May 1981. 
11. Farnsworth, C. L. Sports Vision Patients. Review of 
Optometry, pp. 64-68, March 1984. 
12. Matsuura, S. and Thompson, D. The Consumers Choice in 
Athletic Eyewear. Unpublished doctoral thesis submitted 
in May 1983 at the Pacific University College of 
Optometry. 


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Consumer\u27s choice in protective eyewear

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