Related Experiment Video
Updated: Sep 9, 2026

The Gateway to the Brain: Dissecting the Primate Eye
Published on: May 26, 2009
The spatial resolution capacity of human foveal retina
1Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science, New Haven, CT 06510.
Abstract:
An image on the retina of a human eye enters the visual system through an array of photoreceptors that sets the boundaries on the spatial detail available for neural representation. In order to investigate the extent to which the input spatial detail is preserved by the human neural system, we compare the anatomical spatial limits as determined by the Nyquist frequency, the highest spatial frequency reconstructable from the cone array, and measures of human acuity, the minimum angle resolvable. We find that the anatomical Nyquist limits determined along the temporal horizontal meridian of a well-studied human retina (Curcio, Sloan, Packer, Hendrickson & Kalina, 1987b) offer a reasonable prediction of human acuity within the retinal region extending from slightly off the exact foveal center to about 2.0 deg of retinal eccentricity. However, we find a narrow peak of anatomical resolution at the foveal center where the acuity appears to be overestimated by cone spacing.
Related Concept Videos
The Retina
Vision
Imaging Biological Samples with Optical Microscopy
In optical microscopy, the specimen to be viewed is placed on a glass slide and clipped on the stage...
Super-resolution Fluorescence Microscopy
Anatomy of the Eyeball
Focusing of Light in the Eye

