Subjective measurement of high-order aberrations of the eye.

We used an apparatus similar to Tscherning's aberroscope, and analyzed subjects' drawings to obtain the wave aberration surfaces of 55 eyes. This analysis permitted a Taylor series representation of the wave aberrations to terms of the fourth order. The results revealed a wide variety in type and severity of high-order aberrations in which "cylindrical" aberrations were prominent and cases of classical spherical aberrations were rare. We computed the monochromatic modulation transfer function curves for the range of observations. The overall findings suggest a more prominent role for monochromatic high-order aberrations in degrading the visual image than has hitherto been assumed.