The Amsler Grid is a square-shaped grid used to detect or monitor metamorphopsia or scotoma involving the central visual field in various disorders of the macula and optic nerve head. Specifically, it is used as an inexpensive home monitoring device for early detection of metamorphopsia due to wet age-related macular degeneration. Also, it may be used as a macular function test before cataract surgery.
The grid gets its name from Marc Amsler (1891-1968), a Swiss ophthalmologist, who described the chart in 1947. He was a student of Jules Gonin (1870-1935). He might have gotten the idea of the grid from Edmund Landolt (1846-1926), who devised a similar small card with a grid pattern to be kept in the center of the perimeter. Jacob Hermann Knapp (1832-1911) described scotoma and metamorphopsia in traumatic maculopathy with choroidal rupture using horizontal lines in 1869. Richard Forster (1825-1902) demonstrated metamorphopsia using a square grid in 1874.
Copyright © 2024, StatPearls Publishing LLC.