Optical quality in a myopic population of human eyes

An aberrometer was used to measure the monochromatic aberration of 219 eyes in a population of 113 myopic subjects. The Zernike expansion was used to describe the wavefront aberration of the human eyes. From the distribution of Zernike coefficients, the means of almost all Zernike coefficients are approximately zero, and the mean absolute values of Zernike coefficients convey the level of aberration for our study population. Based on the distribution of Zernike coefficients, the averaged optical quality was computed in different methods. The mean MTF and PSF of individual eyes represent the optical quality for a typical myopic eye. Through the calculation of the visual benefits expected from correcting Zernike modes, a large expected visual benefit can be achieved across all spatial frequencies after correcting 5 Zernike modes. Furthermore, the larger improvement of optical quality can be achieved with correcting more Zernike modes at a higher spatial frequency.