Neoplastic progression is generally characterized by the accumulation of multiple genetic alterations including loss of tumor suppression gene function. Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) has been used to identify genomic regions that harbor tumor suppressor genes and to characterize different tumor types, pathological stages and progression. LOH pattern has been detected by allelotyping using restriction fragment length polymorphism, and later by simple sequence length polymorphisms (SSLPs or microsatellite) for 10 years. This paper reviews the detection of LOH by recently developed single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays (all analyzed by Affymetrix array); furthermore, its advantage and disadvantage were analyzed in several kinds of cancer. Neoplastic progression is generally characterized by the accumulation of multiple genetic alterations including loss of tumor suppression gene function. Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) has been used to identify genomic regions that harbor tumor suppressor genes and to characterize different tumor types, pathological stages and progression. LOH pattern has been detected by allelotyping using restriction fragment length polymorphism, and later by simple sequence length polymorphisms (SSLPs or microsatellite) for 10 years. This paper reviews the detection of LOH by recently developed single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays (all analyzed by Affymetrix arrays); furthermore, its advantage and disadvantages were analyzed in several kinds of cancer.