Statistical Variation of Aberration Structure and Image Quality

[Joann Raytar]

After reading the article Statistical Variation of Aberration Structure and Image Quality in a Normal Population of Healthy Eyes

http://research.opt.indiana.edu/Libr...berration.html

Adaptive optics, refractive surgery, and new designs of ophthalmic lenses all hold promise for reducing the higher-order aberrations of the eye.44 An efficient strategy for deciding which aberrations to correct first is to select those aberrations with the largest wave-front variance.

How will lenses in the future change in regards to the normal eye's natural margin of refractive error?

I have heard of chromatic error and how certain eyewear consumers are affected by its presence when looking through polycarbonate lenses but what is monochromatic error? How does it affect vision as perceived by someone wearing corrective lenses?

[rinselberg]

I have heard of chromatic error and how certain eyewear consumers are affected by its presence when looking through polycarbonate lenses but what is monochromatic error? How does it affect vision as perceived by someone wearing corrective lenses?

I THINK that monochromatic error is the uncorrected eye producing the same kind of optical distortions as are remarked from the effects of chromatic aberration in low Abbe lens materials such as polycarbonate. Monochromatic error in the uncorrected or conventionally corrected eye would cause visual degradation including (but probably not limited to) "pincushion" and "barrel" type distortions. By "conventionally corrected eye", I mean the kinds of spectacle lenses and contact lenses that are generally available today -- lenses which are designed for the traditional optical corrections, but not the newer wavefront type corrections. To my largely uneducated eyes, this PDF format document appears to be an excellent, readable, and really text book quality presentation (of 63 viewgraph style pages) on "Aberration Theory" from the Center for Visual Science at the University of Rochester. There are several references to monochromatic aberration:

http://cfao.ucolick.org/pubs/presentations/eyedesign/05_aberrations_GY.pdf

I found the (above) reference by using the Google Web Search engine with the exact phrase "monochromatic aberration". I'd suggest that you try this yourself. You may find yourself pulled in to some of the other Web pages that it will retrieve for you.

How will lenses in the future change in regard to the normal eye's natural margin of refractive error?

I personally only know of one commercial effort to produce and sell wavefront corrected spectacle lenses and contact lenses -- but there are perhaps other such commercial enterprises that I am not familiar with, at least for the contact lenses. The company that is presently test marketing SV (single vision only) spectacle lenses with wavefront correction technology is called Ophthonix. They are located in Southern California and are probably using California and Southern California in particular as their first test market. If I understand it correctly, an optician would have to be equipped with their particular refractive measurement equipment (Z-View Wavefront Aberrometer) to produce a computerized Rx that is compatible with their spectacle lens manufacturing process. I think that what they are claiming (overall) is that with their Ophthonix wavefront technology, they can use spectacle lenses or contact lenses to move the bar from 20/20 quality vision all the way out to 20/8 vision, as regards what a typical eye patient with no "nasty" visual complications could expect to achieve with their corrective lenses:

http://www.ophthonix.com/

The Ophthonix website offers some tutorial viewgraph presentations (again, in PDF document format) that you may want to study:

http://www.ophthonix.com/reviews/presentations.html

The Ophthonix website also offers some data from CLINICAL studies:

http://www.ophthonix.com/technology/summaries.html

Recently, I started an OptiBoard thread about Ophthonix:

http://www.optiboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10545

There has also been some recent posting on an older thread called "wavefront technology":

http://www.optiboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6100

As to how this will play in the spectacle lens market, it's mostly way over my head technically as a non-professional. But as someone with a general engineering background, I could offer some more basic and obvious questions to consider: How successful will Ophthonix (and other similar product lines that may emerge) be in integrating the new wavefront correction technology with the best or the state-of-the-art in more conventional ophthalmic lens technologies? Will Ophthonix (and others) be able or willing to enter the PAL (progressive) spectacle lens marketplace? Will Ophthonix (and others) be able to provide a range of lens materials (beyond the single lens material that they are starting with) to address consumer requirements such as impact resistance, cosmetics (thin lenses, low weight lenses, flat lenses where desired, wrap lenses and tintable lenses), scratch resistance and AR compatibility and perhaps even POLARIZED wavefront corrected lenses for the chronic highway drivers and outdoor sports enthusiasts among us?

THAT'S A WRAP!

[Joann Raytar]

If I understand it correctly, an optician would have to be equipped with their particular refractive measurement equipment (Z-View Wavefront Aberrometer) to produce a computerized Rx that is compatible with their spectacle lens manufacturing process.

I wonder if this is that much of a stretch. Pete mentioned Varilux lenses that would require specialized fitting equipment and I have used different automated fitting equipment in the past, although I wasn't too impressed with that particular device - it left too great a margin of error if the fitting wasn't done right.

Thanks for the links and the reply rinselberg. You may not be in optics but you grasp the technical aspects of the field very quickly.

[coda]

Thanks for the links and the reply rinselberg. You may not be in optics but you grasp the technical aspects of the field very quickly.

Boy-o-boy, I'll second that.

[drk]

Mark my words: "Wavefront" spectacles and contacts will NEVER WORK! Don't waste your time on it.