Microfluctuations of wavefront aberrations of the eye.

To investigate fluctuations in the wavefront aberrations of the eye and their relation to pulse and respiration frequencies we used a wavefront sensor to measure the dynamics of the Zernike aberrations up to the polynomial fourth radial order. Simultaneously, the subject's pulse rate was measured, from which the instantaneous heart rate was derived. We used an auto-regressive process to derive the power spectra of the Zernike aberration signals, as well as pulse and instantaneous heart rate signals. Linear regression analysis was performed between the frequency components of Zernike aberrations and the pulse and instantaneous heart rate frequencies. Cross-spectrum density and coherence analyses were also applied to investigate the relation between fluctuations of wavefront aberrations, and pulse and instantaneous heart rate. The correlations between fluctuations of individual Zernike aberrations were also determined. A frequency component of all Zernike aberrations up to the fourth radial order was found to be significantly correlated with the pulse frequency (all R(2) >/= 0.51, p < 0.02), and a frequency component of nine out of 12 Zernike aberrations was also significantly correlated with instantaneous heart rate frequency (all R(2) >/= 0.46, p < 0.05). The major correlations among Zernike aberrations occurred between second-order and fourth-order aberrations with the same angular frequencies. Higher order aberrations appear to be related to the cardiopulmonary system in a similar way to that reported for the accommodation signal and pupil fluctuations.