Ageing parameters of the ocular lens by scanning fluorophotometry

A Beer-Lambert analysis of fluorophotometric scans of ocular lenses has been carried out. It is shown that an assumption of a single flourophor allows us to calculate the distribution of this fluorophor along the central lens axis. For the great majority of lenses in our study, covering a wide range of ages, our results are in essential agreement with published results on excised lenses. For a small subset of lenses in the study the assumption of a single fluorophor is found to be unsatisfactory. In these cases a reasonable symmetry assumption allows us to estimate the distribution of an additional agent which removes light from the entering or exiting beams without contributing to the fluorescence. The fact that this agent is restricted to the lens nucleus and that it occurs in lenses in which nuclear changes are clinically evident suggests that it is an expression of nuclear cataract.