Foveal vision power errors induced by spectacle lenses designed to correct peripheral refractive errors

Radial Refractive Gradient (RRG) spectacles are lenses specifically designed to minimize peripheral hyperopic defocus typically found in conventional spectacles. Our goals were: (1) to demonstrate a method to design such lenses; and (2) to quantify the exact foveal vision power errors induced by them.

The design procedure was based on a point-by-point sequential surface construction algorithm that designs a front aspheric surface (back surface is spherical) to achieve a given overall tangential focal length of the lens. A peripheral refraction model was built based on average peripheral refractive errors from a set of eyes. We designed four negative lenses with optical powers: -2.5, -5.0, -7.5 and -10.0 D, so that the tangential focal length of the lens matches the retinal conjugate surface.

The lenses induce very small sagittal power errors in a wide range of off-axis field angles (30°), solving the problem of peripheral hyperopic defocus. However, such designs introduce non-negligible mean power errors (above 0.25 D from 7°, 6.8°, 7.1° and 7.8° for the -2.5, -5.0, -7.5 and -10.0 D lenses, respectively) for foveal vision in a rotating eye.

Our results show the unavoidable errors introduced by RRG spectacles when used for dynamic foveal vision. The described method offers valuable information towards determining the best trade-off between controlling power errors for peripheral and foveal vision.