How Good Is Your Contrast Sensitivity?
Contrast sensitivity is a critical measure of your visual system's processing power. This test uses Gabor patches — the gold-standard stimulus in vision science — to measure yours.
How It Works
You'll see 2 circles. One contains a faint striped pattern.
Click the one with the pattern. The pattern gets fainter each round.
After 20 rounds, you'll see your contrast threshold.
💡 Tip: Sit about arm's length from your screen. Zoom your browser to 100%. Reduce screen glare.
What Is Contrast Sensitivity?
More Than Just Visual Acuity
Visual acuity (the "20/20" test) measures your ability to resolve small, high-contrast details. But real life isn't like an eye chart — most of the visual world is made up of subtle contrast differences.
Contrast sensitivity measures how well your visual system detects differences in luminance between adjacent areas. It's critical for reading in dim light, driving at dusk, recognizing faces, and navigating your environment safely.
Why It Declines With Age
Contrast sensitivity naturally declines with age due to changes in both the optics of the eye (lens yellowing, pupil size reduction) and neural processing in the visual cortex.
The good news: while the optical changes are largely irreversible, the neural component is trainable. Research in perceptual learning has shown that targeted training with Gabor patches can improve contrast sensitivity by strengthening signal processing in the primary visual cortex (V1).
The Contrast Sensitivity Function (CSF)
Vision scientists describe contrast sensitivity as a function of spatial frequency — how fine or coarse the pattern is. Your CSF forms an inverted-U curve: you're most sensitive to medium spatial frequencies (~3–5 cycles/degree) and less sensitive to very fine or very coarse patterns.
This test uses a fixed spatial frequency (medium) to measure your peak contrast sensitivity. A comprehensive clinical assessment would test across multiple frequencies, but this gives a useful screening indicator.