Purpose
More accurate schematic eye models would aid in the design of advanced ophthalmic instrumentation, including OCT, SLO, fundus cameras and fluorescence imagers. Since the aberrations of the human eye vary strongly with retinal eccentricity, it becomes increasingly important to have an optically accurate eye model for the design of instruments requiring a wide field-of-view. We propose a schematic eye that reproduces the aberrations of the human eye across a wide visual field.
Methods
The model eye was built to reproduce the experimentally measured wavefront aberrations for 4-mm pupil recorded for the central 80° of the horizontal meridian (101 eyes) and 50° of the vertical meridian (10 eyes). These data were acquired using a custom scanning Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor [1]. Optical modeling software (Zemax) and a reverse building eye modeling technique were used to optimize a merit function. We developed a custom surface in order to allow the model to be more easily incorporated into the design of imaging instruments.
Results
Across the entire field-of-view, the eye model shows excellent agreement with the measured data both comprehensively and for low-order and high-order aberrations (Fig. 1). In comparison to previous eye models (Fig. 2), our schematic eye excels at reproducing the aberrations at the peripheral retinal. Tilt and decentration of the crystalline lens permits our model to mimic the asymmetries of the aberrations found in real eyes.
Conclusions
Our proposed model shows great promise towards the design of wide-field imaging instruments, and it has the potential to provide further insights in the study of the peripheral optics of the human eye. Also, we outline a robust eye modeling technique that is capable of predicting trends beyond those defined explicitly in the optimization routine.<br /> 1. B. Jaeken, L. Lundstrom, and P. Artal, Opt Express 19, 7903 (2011).