on vision
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Effects
of higher-order ocular aberrations on vision |
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Eugenie Dalimier (eugenie.dalimier@nuigalway.ie) and Chris Dainty (c.dainty@nuigalway.ie)
collaborators: John Barbur (City University, UK) and Rafael Navarro (Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain)
It is well known that the eye is not a perfect optical system. The quality of the retinal images is not only irreducibly diffraction-limited by the iris, it is also degraded by the effects of light scattering and optical aberrations. Spherical and cylindrical refractive aberrations (also called defocus and astigmatism) are easily minimised by spectacles or contact lenses. However, other monochromatic aberrations remain that are due to irregularities in the optical elements of the eye, and are time-dependant because of changes in accommodation, heart pace, evolution of the tear film... One way to correct these specific aberrations is to use adaptive optics (AO). This has first been successfully completed in 1997 [1] with a deformable mirror. It has been proven that monochromatic aberrations could be accurately measured and corrected through adaptive optics. AO led to great improvement in retinal imaging, and possibilities towards enhanced vision. With an Adaptive Optics Vision Simulator, we investigated the effects of the higher-order ocular aberrations on functional, everyday vision. The system is presented here, and a comparative study of several deformable mirrors in view of correcting typical ocular aberrations is detailed here. The experimental results (see Measuring the effects of HO aberrations on functional vision) are given, as well as some work on the modeling of visual processes to understand and predict the effects of ocular aberrations on visual performance (Modeling the effects of ocular aberrations on vision).
This work is
funded by SFI
and was
part of the Sharp-Eye
project, funded by the European
Commission Research Training Network. [1]
J. Liang et al., J. Opt. Soc.
Am.
A 14,
2884-2892 (1997).
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