Identifying Areas of the Visual Field Important for Quality of Life in Patients with Glaucoma

The purpose of this study was to create a vision-related quality of life (VRQoL) prediction system to identify visual field (VF) test points associated with decreased VRQoL in patients with glaucoma.VRQoL score was surveyed in 164 patients with glaucoma using the ‘Sumi questionnaire’. A binocular VF was created from monocular VFs by using the integrated VF (IVF) method. VRQoL score was predicted using the ‘Random Forest’ method, based on visual acuity (VA) of better and worse eyes (better-eye and worse-eye VA) and total deviation (TD) values from the IVF. For comparison, VRQoL scores were regressed (linear regression) against: (i) mean of TD (IVF MD); (ii) better-eye VA; (iii) worse-eye VA; and (iv) IVF MD and better- and worse-eye VAs. The rank of importance of IVF test points was identified using the Random Forest method.The root mean of squared prediction error associated with the Random Forest method (0.30 to 1.97) was significantly smaller than those with linear regression models (0.34 to 3.38, p