Abstract
Purpose: To demonstrate the vision improvement by correcting all the monochromatic aberrations with a static optical device (phase plate) for normal and abnormal human eyes.
Methods: The residual wave-front aberrations of five normal eyes and one abnormal eye were measured with the Shack-Hartmann wave-front sensor. Phase plates, which have a special phase profile designed to correct the human eye's monochromatic wave-front aberration, were manufactured for each subject. To psychophysically demonstrate the vision improvement, the visual acuity was measured with the correction of higher-order aberrations and compared to the second order (defocus and astigmatism) optimized one.
Results: When using phase plates, the total wave-front variance of the higher-order aberration was reduced from 0.714 to 0.151 um for normal eyes and from 3.916 to 1.341 um for the abnormal eye. Errors in the manufacturing process and change of the human eye aberration caused the imperfect correction for the abnormal eye. The visual benefit was calculated as the ratio of the MTF when all the monochromatic aberrations are corrected to the MTF corresponding to the best optimization of defocus and astigmatism. For normal eyes having a 6 mm pupil, the average increase in visual benefit was 2.6. For the abnormal eye, the visual benefit ranged from 1.2 to 1.4. As for the visual acuity in normal eyes, the average improvements in high and low contrast experiments were 0.05 and 0.12 logMAR, respectively. For the abnormal eye, the improvement in visual acuity was considerably more. The vision improvements of 0.4 and 0.5 logMAR were obtained for high and low contrast experiments, respectively.
Conclusion: The vision improvements expressed in terms of wave-front aberration and visual acuity have been demonstrated for normal and abnormal eyes when the monochromatic higher-order aberrations were corrected with phase plates.