Binocular summation for grating detection and resolution in foveal and peripheral vision.

Peripheral monocular grating resolution has been shown to be limited by the sampling density of the underlying retinal ganglion cells. We wanted to determine if peripheral resolution is also sampling limited binocularly; and, if so, how great is any improvement in either detection or resolution when viewing binocularly? We measured detection and resolution acuity for sinusoidal gratings in foveal and peripheral vision both monocularly and binocularly. Detection and resolution acuity were very similar in foveal vision and displayed a binocular improvement of 5% over best monocular acuity. However, in peripheral vision, while detection acuity improved by 6% binocularly, resolution acuity improved by 16%, with a subsequently smaller aliasing zone. This improvement was greater than predicted by probability summation and implies that the two monocular ganglion cell sampling arrays combine at a higher level resulting in a higher binocular sampling density.