Ocular aberrations before and after myopic corneal refractive surgery: LASIK-induced changes measured with laser ray tracing.

Abstract

(1) Laser ray tracing is a well-suited, robust, and reliable technique for the evaluation of the change of ocular aberrations with refractive surgery. (2) Refractive surgery induces important amounts of 3rd and higher order aberrations. The largest increase occurs for spherical aberration. Decentration of the ablation pattern seems to generate 3rd order aberrations. (3) This result is important for the design of customized ablation algorithms, which should cancel existing preoperative aberrations while avoiding the generation of new aberrations.