Prof Dr Bernard Becker 1920 - 2013

Bernard ("Bernie") Becker passed away on August 28, 2013. His 1982 article on "The Onset and Evolution of Glaucomatous Visual Field Defects" (WM Hart and B Becker, Ophthalmology 1982) is superb reading for anyone interested in glaucoma and visual fields, whether silly or serious. The article is hard to find - here is another copy. You may also be interested in a transcript of a 1990 interview with Dr Becker on his personal history in ophthalmology, from the Bernard Becker Medical Library at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

New Perimetry at ARVO '13 in Seattle

Today, Vera Mönter's poster on "Reclaiming the Periphery" will be shown at ARVO in Seattle. Amazingly, we find unexpectedly steep frequency-of-seeing curves in the periphery. This challenges the old assumption that "peripheral visual fields are just too variable...". Please stop by poster #3916.

Meeting of the Open Perimetry Initiative at ARVO '13

We have previously alerted to the subversive activity of the Open Perimetry Initiative who has been on the watch list of our Ministry for a little while (see the post of 17 Nov '12). It now turns out that they will be meeting at the ARVO convention on Sunday 5 May, 1:00 - 2:30 PM, Convention Center room LL3. We believe that this is a serious violation of the perimetric spirit. Perimeters cannot be open - they MUST be closed at least on one end, and ideally ring-fenced all the way around with a fierce and fiery firewall. DO NOT TOUCH THE DATA.

Reading HFA data...

There are people in this world who type threshold estimates from HFA print-outs into spreadsheets. We love them, we admire them, and we'll weep at the news that yet another one has died from lack of food, lack of light, lack of love, or from repetitive strain injury. But we Canadians have found a solution to this problem: A special "Low Force Tactile Numeric Keypad (LFTNK)" made by ErgoCanada.

But seriously: Don't do it! Say No! Stop!! (save the data you got, but STOP doing this by hand. Now!). Seriously, there are much better ways of doing this...More later...

Visual Field Primers

We have now uploaded on Academia the early English and German versions of the "Humphrey Visual Field Primer". These little books are really well written and beautifully illustrated - real gems. In contrast to some of the later editions of the "Primer", the early ones are strong on basic principles and fundamentals. Thanks to Leander Böhme for digitising these.

Für den deutschsprachigen Raum brauchen wir gute Literatur. Thieme, Springer, where art thou? Der Schlaf der Vernunft bringt die Ungeheuer hervor...(und umgekehrt, wenn es nur nicht so lustig wäre).

Sans Mots II

Gesichtsfeldlied

Sans Mots