Evaluation of optical quality in white light from wavefront aberrations for a myopic population of human eyes

Abstract

Purpose:  To evaluate optical quality in white light for a myopic population by means of some metrics, such as AreaMTF, VSMTF and EE.

Methods:  One hundred and thirteen myopic eyes of 113 subjects were enrolled in this study. The optical quality metrics in white light were computed from the polychromatic PSF, which was calculated as the super‐position of the monochromatic PSFs for each wavelength.

Results:  The relationship between optical quality and the root mean square (RMS) of higher‐order aberrations shows that the values of AreaMTF, VSMTF and EE in white light tend to decrease gradually with the increase of RMS. When RMS maintains a constant value, the optical quality varies greatly among eyes. By partial correlation analysis and controlling the impact of total RMS of higher‐order aberrations, the association between the percentage of third‐order aberrations (in total higher‐order aberration) and optical quality can be made. This shows a positive correlation (p < 0.05), which indicates that the greater the percentage of the third‐order aberrations, the better the optical quality, with RMS remaining a constant value. On the contrary, the percentage of fourth‐order aberrations and spherical aberrations shows a negative correlation with optical quality.

Conclusions:  The fourth‐order and spherical aberrations have a greater effect on vision than other order aberrations. The impact of monochromatic aberrations on optical quality is greater than that of chromatic aberrations.

Key words:

• myopia
• optical quality
• polychromatic PSF
• wavefront aberration

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank Nikko Brar OD, Teresita Bollar OD and Dina Iskander OD (Nova Southeastern University, FL, USA) for providing generous assistance and attentive correction of the language.

GRANTS AND FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE

This research is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin City of China (No. 033606011 and No. 07JCYBJC09500), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 60777011).