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Winners in the 2012 Naylor prize competition

Formal academic research in Optometry has now been in progress for nearly 100 years. During that period, the scope of Optometry and the range of instrumentation available in a typical practice have expanded greatly. If Optometry is to progress further, there is a continuing need for optometric education to enable its graduates to conduct their own research in both academic and practice environments, and to assess and, where appropriate apply, the relevant research findings of others. An important aspect of the training in these areas is undergraduate dissertation and project work. The Naylor Prize Competition, established in memory of Manchester’s pioneering research optometrist and teacher, Dr Jon Naylor, encourages such training by offering a number of prizes to students from the optometric teaching institutions of the United Kingdom for the best undergraduate project reports and dissertations. There were six winners this year. Details of the winners and their work are briefly summarised below. In everyday life, we often make use of both vision and hearing to locate stimuli of interest. How then is the information from these two senses combined? How much weight is given to each system under different circumstances? Some answers to these questions were sought by prize-winning Bradford student Kiran Mushtaq in her intriguing research report ‘Ventriloquism in audiovisual spatial localisation’. By exploring localisation judgements in cases where the two sensory systems provided discrepant cues, she was able to demonstrate that her normal subjects showed a greater trust in vision rather than hearing, although hearing still played an important role. Macular pigment is thought to reduce the potential damage caused by shorter wavelength light in the central area of the retina: it also acts as an antioxidant. The question arises as to whether the characteristics of the macular pigment distribution vary in groups with particular pathologies. Subhi Bhatnagar, of the University of Manchester, explored this possibility in his research project, entitled ‘A comparison of the population variation of macular pigment optical density in non-diabetics and type 2 diabetics’. This involved measuring macular pigment optical density in two groups containing 29 type 2 diabetics and 13 non-diabetics, all recruited in an optometric practice. Although this wellconducted pilot study failed to reveal any significant difference between the two groups, there is obvious potential to extend the work to larger groups divided for such factors as age, gender, ethnicity, diet, pathology and other factors. Flicker sensitivity is known to be affected by both age and pathology, particularly glaucoma and hypertension. As yet, however, development of this approach for screening or other purposes has been inhibited by the limitations of the available instrumentation and an imperfect knowledge of the relevant characteristics of normal patients of different ages. Important factors are stimulus luminance and patient pupil size and ocular transmittance, since these affect retinal illuminance. The project carried out by Emily Dowse of City University, ‘Loss of rapid flicker sensitivity in aging, glaucoma and ocular hypertension’, attempted to provide some of this missing information, using a stimulus system employing long wavelength light to minimise differences in crystalline lens and macular pigment transmittance, and several levels of stimulus luminance. Although only a pilot study, she was able to show that a ‘Flicker Sensitivity index’ based on the measurements at several light levels appeared to have real potential for reliably distinguishing those patients who had pathology. The Meibomian glands are responsible for producing meibum, the main component of the tear film lipid layer. Meibomian gland dysfunction, usually obstruction of the terminal duct, can cause increased tear film evaporation and thus dry eye. Elaine Wilson, of Glasgow Caledonian University, explored in her report ‘Infrared trans-illumination of human Meibomian glands’ the utility of a new photographic technique for identifying drop-out in the glands of the lower eyelid. This involved eversion using a hand-held infrared light-emitting wand and photography with a high-resolution camera. Drop-out was assessed from the images both by visual inspection and by using computer software. Among the 53 normal subjects studied, gland drop-out was found to increase with age, although in this population there was no correlation with contact lens wear or the results of the McMonnies questionnaire for dry-eye symptoms. The method appears to be promising as a clinical tool in the diagnosis of Meibomian gland dysfunction. The last two prizes went to Cardiff students, each of whom produced an excellent, balanced review of their chosen clinical subject area. Helen Berry surveyed the important, but sometimes neglected, topic of ‘The efficacy of orthoptic exercises for convergence insufficiency’. Drawing on a wide range of published material, this remarkably well-organised report focused particularly on the utility of home-based, free-space orthoptic exercises. It concluded that a combination of sustained convergence (e.g. pencilto-nose, Brock string) and stepped disparity (e.g. dot card, jump vergence) training was likely to be most effective. Lauren Judge’s review was entitled ‘Connective tissue in the