Comparison of aberrations after standard and customized refractive surgery

Abstract

To detect possible differences in residual wavefront aberrations between standard and customized laser refractive surgery based on mathematical modeling, the residual optical aberrations after conventional and customized laser refractive surgery were compared according to the ablation profile with transition zone. The results indicated that ablation profile has a significant impact on the residual aberrations. The amount of residual aberrations for conventional correction is higher than that for customized correction. Additionally, the residual aberrations for high myopia eyes are markedly larger than those for moderate myopia eyes. For a 5 mm pupil, the main residual aberration term is coma and yet it is spherical aberration for a 7 mm pupil. When the pupil diameter is the same as optical zone or greater, the magnitudes of residual aberrations is obviously larger than that for a smaller pupil. In addition, the magnitudes of the residual fifth or sixth order aberrations are relatively large, especially secondary coma in a 6 mm pupil and secondary spherical aberration in a 7 mm pupil. Therefore, the customized ablation profile may be superior to the conventional correction even though the transition zone and treatment decentration are taken into account. However, the customized ablation profile will still induce significant amount of residual aberrations.