Multifractal nature of ocular aberration dynamics of the human eye

Ocular monochromatic aberrations display dynamic behavior even when the eye is fixating on a stationary stimulus. The fluctuations are commonly characterized in the frequency domain using the power spectrum obtained via the Fourier transform. In this paper we used a wavelet-based multifractal analytical approach to provide a more in depth analysis of the nature of the aberration fluctuations. The aberrations of five subjects were measured at 21 Hz using an open-view Shack-Hartmann sensor. We show that the aberration dynamics are multifractal. The most frequently occurring Holder exponent for the rms wavefront error, averaged across the five subjects, was 0.31 +/- 0.10. This suggests that the time course of the aberration fluctuations is antipersistant. Future applications of multifractal analysis are discussed. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America