Clinical importance of spherical and chromatic aberration on the accommodative response in contact lens wear

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the accommodation response under both mono- and polychromatic light while varying the amount of spherical aberration. It is thought that chromatic and spherical aberrations are directional cues for the accommodative system and could affect response time, velocity or lag. Spherical aberration is often eliminated in modern contact lenses in order to enhance image quality in the unaccommodated eye. This study was divided into two parts. The first part was done to evaluate the amount of spherical and other Zernike aberrations in the unaccommodated eye when uncorrected and with two types of correction (trial lens and spherical-aberration controlled contact lens) and the second part evaluated the dynamic accommodation responses obtained when wearing each of the corrections under polychromatic and monochromatic conditions. Measurements of accommodation showed no significant differences in time, velocity and lag of accommodation after decreasing the spherical aberration with a contact lens, neither in monochromatic nor polychromatic light. It is unlikely that small to normal changes of spherical aberration in white light or monochromatic mid-spectral light affect directional cues for the accommodative system, not in white light or mid-spectral monochromatic light, since the accommodative response did not show any change.