Optical quality of the eye of the cane toad Bufo marinus

Abstract

The wide-angle optical quality of the cane toad eye was measured using a single-pass intraocular optical fibre microprobe, a double-pass projection method and high magnification ophthalmoscopy to photograph individual photoreceptors. The cane toad eye is a wide angle optical device with a horizontal field of nearly 200 deg and a large relative aperture ( caf/1). Its image quality, which is poor compared to diffraction-limited performance, descreases relatively little towards the periphery. Rough matching was found between image quality and the potential resolution of the rod array, although undersampling occurs for small pupils. Undersampling probably also occurs for the cone and ganglion cell arrays. The relative rotational symmetry of the topographic distribution of image quality precludes direct matching to the topography of the visual streak at the ganglion cell layer although it remains to be determined whether it is matched to the receptor distribution.