Research of the off-axis monochromatic aberrations of the human eye

Abstract

When the pupil is dilated in dim light the higher-order aberrations increase and degrade badly visual performance. So it is important that the wave-front aberrations of human eyes for scotopia vision with large pupil were developed. Rod cells are dominant work for scotopia vision. Rod cells distribute in the periphery. The density of rod cells is highest at 20ovisual field and it drops by 50% at 50° visual field. Therefore, from the distribution of rod cells, the research is significant for monochromatic aberrations of the eye across 50ohorizontal visual field. Aberrations of the human eyes in the horizontal visual field were measured with Hartmann-Shack wave front sensor. The characteristic of third to tenth order Zernike aberration rms both temporally and nasally out to 50° is as follows: considerable differences occur among subjects in the pattern of aberrations, particularly for the dominating second-order aberrations; The third to tenth order Zernike aberrations increase with the visual angle, but the increscent magnitude decreases as the Zernike order increases; in despite of imperfect symmetry, the increscent magnitude is the same on the whole; the third-order Zernike aberrations increases up to 2.2 times from 0° to ±50°visual angle, the forth-order up to 1.6 times, and the fifth to tenth order up to 1.5 times.