SUBJECTIVE MEASUREMENT OF HIGH-ORDER ABERRATIONS OF EYE

Using an apparatus similar to Tscherning''s aberroscope, and analyzing subjects'' [human] drawings, the wave aberration surfaces of 55 eyes were obtained. This analysis permitted a Taylor series representation of the wave aberrations to terms of the 4th order. There was a wide variety in type and severity of high-order aberrations in which cylindrical aberrations were prominent and cases of classical spherical aberration were rare. The monochromatic modulation transfer function curves for the range of observations were computed. There may be a more prominent role for monochromatic high-order aberrations in degrading the visual image than has hitherto been assumed.