Abstract
Purpose: :
To establish the optical prameters of transmission through the crystalline lens in the human eye, and thereby verify the results of previous published work. Furthermore, we wanted to quantify the changes in in the transmission spectrum as a function of age of the donor lenses.
Methods: :
We used human donor lenses. Age-range was 33 to 79 years. For Transmission measurements, the lenses were placed in 5 mm special optical glass cuvettes filled with a balanced saline solution. A tungsten high-power halogen light source (Ocean optics) was used as a white light source covering the spectral range of 350 nm to 900 nm. The light source was fiber coupled using a 1000 micron core silica fiber. The detector consisted of an integrating sphere (Ocean Optics) that was fibercoupled (600 micron core) to a CCD-based spectrometer (Ocean Optics). The source fiber and integrating sphere were carefully aligned and fixed in position. The silica cuvette was placed between the output fiber and the integrating sphere, and a transmission spectrum was recorded. A cuvette containing the balanced saline solution only was used as a reference measurements.
Results: :
We found that the age-related brunescence was clearly visible in the transmission spectrum as a decreasing transmission of the blue-green (400 - 550 nm) light with increasing age. We routinely recorded a transmission of more than 80 % in the spectral range above 600 nm.
Conclusions: :
Contrary to earlier results we found a considerably higher transmission in the wavelength range above 500 nm for all the measured lenses.
Keywords: optical properties • aging: visual performance