Sensitivity of off-axis performance of aspheric spectacle lenses to tilt and decentration

Apparatus was modified to measure, and theoretical raytracing was used to predict, off-axis powers of spectacle lenses in the presence of tilt or decentration. In response to poor fitting in the form of tilt or decentration, lenses with aspheric front surfaces were found to have greater off-axis power errors than best-form lenses with spherical surfaces. This is attributable to the aspheric lenses having flatter surfaces than the spherical lenses. The errors are up to twice those occurring for the spherical lenses, and can be quite high, e.g. 0.9 D astigmatism for +6D power with 10 degrees tilt in 20 degrees upgaze. Negative lenses are more sensitive to poor fitting than are positive lenses of the same power. The errors for straight ahead vision associated with tilt are approximately proportional to the square of the angle of tilt, and the errors for straight ahead vision associated with decentration are approximately proportional to the square of decentration. It is most important that aspheric lenses be correctly fitted, which means that each 2 degrees of pantascopic tilt should be accompanied by approximately 1 mm decentration.