Scheimpflug image-processing method for accurate measurement of ocular surfaces
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Updated: Jun 13, 2026
Anterior High-Resolution Optical Coherence Tomography in the Diagnosis and Therapeutic Monitoring of Ocular Surface Squamous Neoplasia
Published on: August 9, 2024
1New England College of Optometry, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. hej@neco.edu
Purpose:
To develop a method to process Scheimpflug images to estimate higher-order variations in ocular surfaces.
Setting:
New England College of Optometry, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Methods:
Zernike polynomial functions were used rather than lower-order surface functions to fit the ocular surfaces to evaluate higher-order variations. A related ray-tracing method was developed to correct optical distortion of the Scheimpflug image.
Results:
The new method to process Scheimpflug images showed higher-order variations in the posterior corneal surface. In a simulation, ignoring higher-order variations in the anterior corneal surface, as in previous studies, produced an error as high as 202% for some estimated Zernike coefficients of the posterior corneal surface.
Conclusion:
The results indicate that it is necessary to correct refractive distortion in Scheimpflug images using higher-order surface functions and that the method developed in this study can be used to process scheimpflug images for measurement of ocular wavefront aberrations.
