Effect of spectacle and contact lenses on the effective corneal refractive zone

The effective corneal refractive zone is that portion of the cornea traversed by the light that enters the pupil of the eye from object points at a specified angle from the line of sight. It is of relevance in corneal surgery and for understanding the effect of corneal opacities and lesions on vision. Gaussian optics is used in this paper to obtain explicit equations for the geometry of the effective corneal refractive zone for a simplified eye, when spectacle and contact lenses are worn. The theory shows that lenses of positive power increase the diameter of the effective corneal refractive zone and lenses of negative power decrease the diameter. For axial object points the diameter of the effective corneal refractive zone increases by about 0.015 mm per dioptre increase in the power of the spectacle or contact lens. For object points at 30 degrees from the longitudinal axis, the increase is about twice as much in the case of contact lenses and more than four times as much in the case of spectacle lenses.