Retinal image quality for virtual eyes generated by a statistical model of ocular wavefront aberrations

A statistical model of the aberration structure of normal, well-corrected eyes was developed previously (Opthal. Physiol. Opt22, 427-433, 2002.) from wavefront aberrations measured for 100 normal eyes (J. Opt. Soc. Am. A.19, 2329-2348, 2002.). The model is capable of generating an unlimited number of wavefront aberration functions for virtual eyes drawn randomly from a multivariate Gaussian distribution of Zernike aberration coefficients. This report provides evidence that monochromatic retinal image quality in virtual eyes, as quantified by 31 different image quality metrics (J. Vis.4, 329-351, 2004.), is representative of human eyes but slightly exaggerates the degradation of the retinal image caused by ocular aberrations. A demonstration program for producing virtual eyes is included as an Appendix to this paper.