Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 21, 2026
Quantitative Fundus Autofluorescence for the Evaluation of Retinal Diseases
Published on: March 11, 2016
[Retinal image quality pre- and post-lasik as a function of illuminance]
Background:
The aim of this study was to simulate the effect of illuminance on retinal image quality before and after LASIK.
Patients And Methods:
Wavefront sensing was performed in eighteen eyes of 12 patients before and one month after uncomplicated LASIK using a Hartmann-Shack sensor. A sigmoid curve was fitted to pupillometry data obtained at 4, 0.4 and 0.04 lux. Based on the sigmoid fit, pre- and postoperative wavefront errors were simulated for different pupil diameters over a corresponding range from 10 (-2) to 10 (2) lux. Retinal image quality was described by computation of the visual Strehl ratio based on the optical transfer function (VSOTF) for a spectacle correction preoperatively and for the uncorrected eye postoperatively.
Results:
At an illuminance of 1 lux the mean pupil diameter was 4.81 +/- 0.91 mm and log VSOTF dropped from -0.47 +/- 0.29 to -1.18 +/- 0.32 (p < 0.001) after LASIK. The steepest pupil-induced decrease of VSOTF occurred preoperatively at 0.67 +/- 0.26 lux (range 0.2 - 1.58 lux). After LASIK, L (crit) on average was 0.96 +/- 0.53 lux (p < 0.05; range 0.2 - 1.78).
Conclusions:
The steepest pupil-induced decrease of retinal image quality occurred in the high mesopic range, however, there was intersubject variability.
