Artifacts in Visual Fields

Abstract

Visual field (VF) examination, as is well known, forms the key stone of management in glaucoma. However, this modality of investigation is not free of errors and artifacts. These artifacts may be patient dependent or maybe dependent on the perimetrist conducting the test. These artifacts are commonly seen in day-to-day clinical practice and lack of familiarity with these errors may lead to misdiagnosis or incorrect staging of the disease, thereby significantly impacting patient management. This highlights the importance of awareness of these artifacts while reading a VF print out. With this article, we aim to describe the common VF artifacts seen in clinical practice with examples.

Keywords

• artifacts
• glaucoma investigation
• visual fields