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Simulating the Mechanics of Lens Accommodation via a Manual Lens Stretcher

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Published on: February 23, 2018

Monocular accommodation response to random defocus changes induced by a tuneable lens.

Najnin Sharmin¹, Brian Vohnsen¹

¹Advanced Optical Imaging Group, School of Physics, University College Dublin, Dublin 4, Ireland.

Vision Research

|October 22, 2019

Summary

The human eye corrects focus accurately during monocular vision, but with a noticeable delay. This finding suggests light absorption in the retina may guide accommodation and emmetropization.

Keywords:

Accommodation Defocus Eye model Geometrical optics Retina model

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Area of Science:

Ophthalmology
Vision Science
Physiological Optics

Background:

Human eye accommodation involves multiple cues like object size and aberrations.
The retina's ability to detect defocus sign is crucial for emmetropization and accommodation, but findings remain debated.
Previous studies on chick eye growth yielded ambiguous results regarding defocus sign decoding.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if foveal vision directs human eye accommodation correctly by minimizing defocus.
To determine if blur removal precedes reliance on other accommodative cues in monocular vision.
To clarify the role of defocus sign detection in human accommodation.

Main Methods:

Monocular accommodation studies were conducted on emmetropic and myopic human subjects.
A tunable lens induced negative defocus steps while subjects viewed a target at 1-meter distance.
A Hartmann-Shack wavefront sensor measured real-time defocus and Zernike coefficients; pupil size and target brightness were controlled.

Main Results:

The young adult human eye demonstrated reliable accommodation in the correct direction.
A significant latency of 300-700 milliseconds was observed in the accommodative response.
Defocus removal was confirmed as a primary driver in the initial phase of accommodation.

Conclusions:

The human eye effectively corrects defocus monocularly, albeit with a delay.
An absorption model of light in retinal outer segments may explain defocus symmetry breaking.
This mechanism could serve as a guide for both accommodation and emmetropization processes.