Abstract
The resolution limit imposed by the aberrations of the eye generally prohibits imaging structures in the living retina the size of single cells. Though it is possible to correct defocus and astigmatism with spectacle lenses, additional aberrations such as coma, spherical, and higher order aberrations remain. We have constructed an adaptive optical system that measures the wave aberration of the eye and compensates for it with a deformable mirror. A Hartmann-Shack wavefromt sensor measures the local slopes of the wavefront in the pupil plane produced by a point source on the retina. The wave aberration is calculated from the wavefront slopes with a least squares technique. We compensate for the wave aberration with a deformable mirror that has 37 actuators with each 3-µm stroke (Xinetics, Inc.). In one subject with a 6-mm pupil and 632.8nm light, adaptive compensation reduced the peak to peak-phase error from 2.9 µm to less than 0.5 µm. Figure 1 shows the retinal point spread function in this subject calculated from the wave aberration when no adaptive correction had been made. Defocus and astigmatism have been removed from the wave aberration because they can be corrected with spectacle lenses. Figure 2 shows the point spread function after adaptive correction.
© 1996 Optical Society of America
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