Imperfections in the way light passes through the eye, which affects the ability to focus properly. Commonly used to refer specifically to higher order aberrations, which are caused by all laser surgeries and are associated with reductions in vision quality such as poor contrast sensitivity, night vision disturbance or ghosting.

Aberrations is a general term for optical imperfections as measured with wavefront aberrometry. Aberrations are divided into lower order and higher order. Lower order aberrations are another way to describe refractive error, which is correctible with lenses, while higher order aberrations cannot be corrected with lenses.

Aberrations are expressed in Zernike polynomials.

The two most frequently discussed aberrations associated withlaser eye surgery are spherical aberration (which causes night vision disturbance) and coma (which is associated with monocular diplopia).

higher order aberrations

lower order aberrations

refractive error

vision quality

wavefront aberrometry

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Last updated 30 Nov 2004.