Visual field testing, or perimetry, measures peripheral visual loss in eye diseases such as glaucoma. Rarebit Perimetry (RBP) is a new and novel perimetric method, introduced in 2002 by Lars Frisén (2002), with the aim of detecting low degrees of neural damage within the retina. / RBP is unlike conventional perimetric methods that measure levels of retinal sensitivity, but instead uses very bright (i.e. suprathreshold) and very small targets to detect tiny areas of absolute blindness within otherwise normal areas of vision. RBP thus claims to locate miniscule gaps in the receptive field matrix of neurons in the retina, with the assumption that dead neurons leave gaps in this matrix. The most useful application of this idea is to detect progressive eye disease in the earliest stages (Frisén, 2002). Current research shows that RBP correlates with other standard visual field tests (Brusini, Salvetat, et al., 2005; Frisén, 2003; Gedik, Akman, et al., 2007; Martin & Wanger, 2004), but may afford greater sensitivity by detecting very mild visual losses missed by other tests (Martin, Ley, et al., 2004; Martin & Nilsson, 2007; Nilsson, Wendt, et al., 2007). / To date, there are no studies that definitively test the theoretical basis of RBP, so in this thesis I aim to explore the proposed underlying mechanisms and assumptions of this test. In particular, the proposed mechanism of RBP leads to specific predictions as to how responses will alter when the luminances of the RBP targets are systematically decreased. I therefore compared RBP responses of mean hit rate as a function of target luminance and found results to be inconsistent with the proposed RBP mechanism. Mathematical simulations were performed to explore reasons for the differences between the two groups (Chapter Seven).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/269921 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Hackett, Deborah Anne |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Restricted Access: Abstract and Citation Only Available |
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