Abstract

The task in conventional perimetry is to detect an incremental spot of light on a uniform background. The recent work of Quigley, et al.¹ indicates that conventional perimetry can be insensitive to large amounts of optic nerve damage in glaucoma. This lack of sensitivity is not surprising, considering that individual ganglion cells can respond to light intensities close to normal psychophysical thresholds.^2,3 A single functioning ganglion cell receptive field at the test stimulus position might therefore yield a nearly normal sensitivity measurement, even though as many as ten receptive field centers would normally cover that position.⁴

© 1987 Optical Society of America