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Updated: Jul 14, 2026
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Published on: September 16, 2025
Relationship between residual aberration and light-adapted pupil size.
Hiroyuki Sakai1, Yutaka Hirata, Shiro Usui
1Laboratory for Neuroinformatics, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan. sakai@brain.riken.jp
Summary
Eye aberration levels influence pupil size, affecting image quality. This study found a correlation between residual aberration and light-adapted pupil diameter in human subjects.
Area of Science:
- Ophthalmology
- Visual Optics
- Retinal Image Quality
Background:
- Pupil size dynamically adjusts to control retinal illuminance and optimize image quality.
- Understanding the interplay between ocular aberrations and pupil response is crucial for visual science.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between residual aberrations (astigmatism, higher-order aberrations) and light-adapted pupil size in humans.
- To determine if pupil size adjusts to maintain retinal image sharpness and illuminance based on aberration levels.
Main Methods:
- Measured monochromatic wave aberration and light-adapted pupil diameters in 20 human subjects.
- Reconstructed wave aberration using Zernike polynomial expansion and computed neural sharpness as a residual aberration metric.
- Statistically analyzed the correlation between neural sharpness and pupil diameter across different luminance levels.
Main Results:
- A significant positive correlation was observed between light-adapted pupil diameter and neural sharpness, excluding dark-adapted conditions.
- Pupil diameter did not show a significant correlation with the spherical equivalent, consistent with prior research.
Conclusions:
- The degree of residual aberration in the eye significantly influences light-adapted pupil size.
- These findings suggest a feedback mechanism where the eye adjusts pupil diameter in response to optical aberrations to optimize visual performance.
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