[Frequency-doubling technology : A new method for determining glaucomatous visual field defects].

Glaucoma is a disease in which death of retinal ganglion cells is associated with loss of visual function. The gold standard for visual field testing has been standard automated perimetry (SAP). However, up to 30-50% of retinal ganglion cells must be lost before a scotoma is detected with SAP. Therefore, investigators have been interested in finding diagnostic techniques that would allow earlier detection of visual field loss than that detected by standard white-on-white perimetry. Frequency-doubling technology (FDT) has been suggested as a promising technique that may detect glaucomatous ganglion cell damage earlier than SAP by targeting a sparsely spaced subsystem of Mgamma retinal ganglion cells where cell damage is less masked by redundancy. The second generation of FDT perimetry, the Matrix FDT, was released with the intention of improving the spatial resolution of visual field defects. In this article we present FDT and discuss data that compare FDT with standard white-on-white perimetry.