Abstract
Purpose :
Peripheral retinal image quality as well as amount and direction of defocus have been hypothesized to influence development of central refractive error. However, peripheral optical aberrations are not routinely examined in optometric practice. The purpose of this study was to investigate the correlation between central and peripheral lower and higher order ocular wavefront aberrations.
Methods :
A commercial Shack-Hartmann aberrometer was modified and used to take measurements in central and eight 30° eccentricities (nasal, superior-nasal, superior, superior-temporal, temporal, inferior-temporal, inferior, and inferior nasal). Thirty eight adult subjects with astigmatism less than 2.50 D participated in this study. Ocular wavefront aberrations, expressed as Zernike coefficients up to the 6th order, were reported and Root-Mean-Square (RMS) values were computed for correlation analysis.
Results :
Both total wavefront RMS in center and periphery were highly correlated with central defocus, a lower order wavefront aberration (Defocus vs. Central RMS: R2 = 0.98, p < 0.0001; Defocus vs. 30° RMS: R2 = 0.81, p < 0.0001). Central RMS was also highly correlated with 30° RMS (R2 = 0.83, p < 0.0001). Higher-order aberrations (HOA) in center and periphery demonstrated strong correlation as well (Central HOA RMS vs. 30° HOA RMS: R2 = 0.24, p = 0.0017). However, neither central HOA nor peripheral HOA demonstrated statistical significant correlation with central defocus (Defocus vs. Central HOA RMS: R2 = 0.001, p = 0.88; Defocus vs. 30° HOA RMS: R2 = 0.005, p = 0.66).
Conclusions :
In general, higher myopia presented higher amount of optical blur in both central and peripheral visual fields. A large amount of central HOA also indicated a large amount of peripheral HOA. However, increased central myopic defocus was not an indicator for increased amounts of either central or peripheral HOA.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.