Ray-tracing Analysis of the Corneal Power From Scheimpflug Data

To describe a method by which mapped corneal elevation data can be used for ray-tracing analysis of the effective corneal power.

Mapped elevation data of the front and back surface of the cornea exported by a clinical Scheimpflug camera was triangulated into a polygonal format and imported into a commercial optical engineering software. The focal length of the cornea was determined by exact ray tracing analysis of the distance giving the sharpest point spread function (PSF) at the selected image plane. The effective corneal power could then be determined as the reciprocal of the observed focal length "reduced to air." The corneal power determined by the ray-tracing procedure was checked for reproducibility and effect of pupil size and finally compared with standard keratometry methods.

Twenty random cases referred for cataract or refractive lens surgery were investigated. The ray-traced corneal power was found to be highly reproducible with a maximum error of 0.023 diopters (D) between repeated ray-tracing experiments. The mean ray-traced corneal power of 42.34 D (assuming a 3-mm pupil) was found to be 1.02 D lower than the standard keratometry reading assuming a keratometric index of 1.3375 (P < .001). The ray-traced corneal power was found to be higher than the true net power (P < .01) but not significantly different from the total corneal refractive power reported by the Scheimpflug device (P > .05). The ray-traced corneal power increased 0.31 D when the pupil size increased from 3 to 5 mm, which was attributed to spherical aberration.

Exact ray tracing can be used on mapped tomography data to analyze for the effective corneal power. This technique was found to be highly reproducible and may be a promising tool in the analysis of the true power of the cornea of any shape. [J Refract Surg. 2018;34(1):45-50.].