This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Study: Laser technology exists for 'supernormal vision'
CLEVELAND — Supernormal vision may be achievable using currently available scanning lasers with a beam diameter of 1 mm or less, suggest researchers here at the Cleveland Clinic. High order aberrations of the eye were eliminated by researchers using computer simulations of laser ablations.
Scanning a small-spot laser beam is the simplest and most flexible method to produce a complex ablation profile, said David Huang, MD, PhD, and colleagues.
Dr. Huang and colleagues simulated ablations with beam diameters and profiles typical of current commercial excimer lasers. They used these simulations to quantify the relationships among laser spot size, beam profile and aberration correction. The group simulated corneal ablations to correct aberrations up to the eighth order Zernike mode.
The smallest spot sizes achieved by the lasers simulated in the study range from 0.65 mm to 2 mm. The beam profiles are either top-hat, Gaussian or in between (truncated Gaussian).
Dr. Huang noted the simulations created had several limitations; for instance, they do not account for the microscopic roughness of the ablated surface caused by the imperfect overlap of a finite number of pulses.
"Our study shows that, based on fundamental considerations, the 1 mm and smaller beam sizes utilized on current scanning laser systems should be able to eliminate most higher order optical aberrations from the eye," Dr. Huang said.
Detailed results of the study appear in the September/October 2001 issue of Journal of Refractive Surgery.