Abstract
The optics of the human eye and the correction or compensation of its refractive errors has been studied for the last 700 years. Prior to refractive surgery, the wavefront aberrations of the eye were sometimes considered as relatively insignificant when thinking about the optics of the eye. The reason for this is that some wavefront aberrations do not necessarily cause a degradation in visual acuity below 20/20 vision. With the advent of laser and other refractive surgeries, significant amounts of higher order spherical aberrations (SA) and coma were sometimes induced in treated eyes, increasing the interest in higher order monochromatic aberrations such as spherical aberrations. Often with small pupil sizes these aberrations went unnoticed, but in low lighting conditions or in patients with myopia and/or larger pupils, the induced aberrations sometimes caused discomfort.
The aim of this dissertation was to study the 4th order Root Mean Square (RMS) including SA of unaided control eyes (myopes specifically) and compare these results to the 4th order RMS including SA of the same eyes but with two different brands of contact lenses; the Soflens 38 (SL) being a standard soft contact lens (CL) and the Pure Vision 2 (PV) being an aberration control contact lens (ACCL) that is said to provide correction of higher order aberrations (HOA) such as spherical aberrations. Measurements were obtained for either the right or left eye only for each participant in both photopic and scotopic conditions and comparisons between the control and experimental readings were performed and...
M.Phil. (Optometry)