Clinical use of pseudorandom binary sequence white noise in assessment of the human vestibulo-ocular system.

White noise rotational stimulation has been used to evaluate the human vestibulo-ocular response for 30 normal subjects over the frequency range from 0.02 to 1.6 Hz and is being extended to characterize response of patients having documented abnormalities. For clinical use, the white noise stimulus has the advantages of shortening the test time by presenting all stimulus frequencies simultaneously, and being well-tolerated by both normal subjects and patients alike. Cross spectral calculations which compare the computer reconstructed slow phase eye velocity response to the pseudorandom acceleration stimulus yield a set of linear and nonlinear estimates of the vestibulo-ocular response. Pilot data indicate that a classification of the disease state can be made using this set of estimates. This classification will be presented and discussed.