Jos J Rozema1,2, Gareth D Hastings3,4, Marta Jiménez-García1,2, Carina Koppen1,2, Raymond A Applegate3. 1. Visual Optics Lab Antwerp (VOLANTIS), Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Antwerp University, Wilrijk, Belgium. 2. Department of Ophthalmology, Antwerp University Hospital, Edegem, Belgium. 3. College of Optometry, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA. 4. Center for Innovation in Optics and Vision, School of Optometry, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA.
Abstract
PURPOSE: To investigate whether the movement of a rigid sphero-cylindrical contact lens has a greater impact on the visual image quality in highly aberrated eyes than in normal eyes. METHODS: For 20 normal and 20 keratoconic SyntEyes, a previously determined best sphero-cylindrical rigid lens was permitted to shift by up to ±1 mm from the line of sight and rotate up to ±15°. Each of the 52,111 lens locations sampled was ray-traced to determine the influence on the wavefront aberration. In turn, the logarithm of visual Strehl ratio (log10 [VSX]) was calculated for each aberration structure and was used to estimate the associated changes in logMAR visual acuity. Finally, contour surfaces of two-letter change in visual acuity were plotted in three-dimensional misalignment space, consisting of decentrations in the x and y directions and rotation, and volumes within these surfaces were calculated. RESULTS: The variations in image quality within the misalignment space were unique to each eye. A two-letter loss was generally reached with smaller misalignments in keratoconic eyes (10.5 ± 4.7° of rotation or 0.27 ± 0.13 mm of shift) than in normal eyes (13.4 ± 1.8° and 0.39 ± 0.15 mm, respectively) due to larger cylindrical errors. For keratoconic eyes, on average, 14.4 ± 14.9% of misalignment space saw VSX values above the lower normal VSX threshold, well below the values of normal eyes of 48.5 ± 18.5%. In some eyes, a specific combination of lens shift and lens rotation away from the line of sight leads to a simulated improvement in visual image quality. CONCLUSION: Variations in visual image quality due to the misalignment of rigid sphero-cylindrical contact lens corrections are larger for keratoconic eyes than for normal eyes. In some cases, a specific misalignment may improve visual image quality, which could be considered in the design of the next generation of rigid contact lenses.
PURPOSE: To investigate whether the movement of a rigid sphero-cylindrical contact lens has a greater impact on the visual image quality in highly aberrated eyes than in normal eyes. METHODS: For 20 normal and 20 keratoconic SyntEyes, a previously determined best sphero-cylindrical rigid lens was permitted to shift by up to ±1 mm from the line of sight and rotate up to ±15°. Each of the 52,111 lens locations sampled was ray-traced to determine the influence on the wavefront aberration. In turn, the logarithm of visual Strehl ratio (log10 [VSX]) was calculated for each aberration structure and was used to estimate the associated changes in logMAR visual acuity. Finally, contour surfaces of two-letter change in visual acuity were plotted in three-dimensional misalignment space, consisting of decentrations in the x and y directions and rotation, and volumes within these surfaces were calculated. RESULTS: The variations in image quality within the misalignment space were unique to each eye. A two-letter loss was generally reached with smaller misalignments in keratoconic eyes (10.5 ± 4.7° of rotation or 0.27 ± 0.13 mm of shift) than in normal eyes (13.4 ± 1.8° and 0.39 ± 0.15 mm, respectively) due to larger cylindrical errors. For keratoconic eyes, on average, 14.4 ± 14.9% of misalignment space saw VSX values above the lower normal VSX threshold, well below the values of normal eyes of 48.5 ± 18.5%. In some eyes, a specific combination of lens shift and lens rotation away from the line of sight leads to a simulated improvement in visual image quality. CONCLUSION: Variations in visual image quality due to the misalignment of rigid sphero-cylindrical contact lens corrections are larger for keratoconic eyes than for normal eyes. In some cases, a specific misalignment may improve visual image quality, which could be considered in the design of the next generation of rigid contact lenses.
Authors: John de Brabander; Nicolas Chateau; Gildas Marin; Norberto Lopez-Gil; Eef Van Der Worp; Antonio Benito Journal: Optom Vis Sci Date: 2003-09 Impact factor: 1.973