Can clinical colour vision tests be used to predict the results of the Farnsworth lantern test?

Clinicians usually do not have access to a lantern test when making an occupational assessment of the ability of a person with defective colour vision to recognise signal light colours: they must rely on the results of ordinary clinical tests. While all colour vision defectives fail the Holmes Wright Type B lantern test and most fail the Holmes Wright Type A lantern, 35% of colour vision defectives pass the Farnsworth lantern. Can clinical tests predict who will pass and fail the Farnsworth lantern? We find that a pass (less than two or more diametrical crossings) at the Farnsworth Panel D 15 Dichotomous test has a sensitivity of 0.67 and specificity of 0.94 in predicting a pass or fail at the Farnsworth lantern test: a Nagel range of > 10 has a sensitivity of 0.87 and a specificity of 0.57. We conclude that neither the D 15 nor the Nagel Anomaloscope matching range are satisfactory predictors of performance on the Farnsworth Lantern.

[1]  B L Cole,et al.  A survey and evaluation of lantern tests of color vision. , 1982, American journal of optometry and physiological optics.

[2]  E. Zrenner,et al.  Colour Vision Deficiencies XII , 1995, Documenta Ophthalmologica Proceedings Series.

[3]  Barry L. Cole,et al.  Protans and PAPI: Recognition of a two colour code by persons with defective colour vision , 1995 .

[4]  B L Cole,et al.  VALIDATION OF THE HOLMES‐WRIGHT LANTERNS FOR TESTING COLOUR VISION * , 1983, Ophthalmic & physiological optics : the journal of the British College of Ophthalmic Opticians.