Theoretical impact of chromatic aberration correction on visual acuity

Abstract

It has been known for more than 220 years that the image quality of the human eye is significantly degraded by chromatic aberrations. Recently, it was shown experimentally that correcting chromatic aberrations results in a 0.2- to 0.8-line improvement in visual acuity. Here we ask, is this expected? We developed tools that enable simulations of the optical impact of physiologically relevant amounts of chromatic aberration in real human eyes and combined these with tools that compute the visual acuity of an ideal observer. This allows us to characterize the theoretical impact of chromatic aberration correction on visual acuity. Results indicate a substantive improvement of 0.4- to 2-lines in ideal observer visual acuity with chromatic aberration correction. Ideal observer thresholds benefit significantly more from correction of longitudinal than correction of transverse chromatic aberration. Finally, improvements in ideal observer visual acuity are greater for subjects with less monochromatic aberration, such that subjects with better baseline optical quality benefit most from correction of chromatic aberrations.