WAVEFRONT TECHNOLOGY: HOW IT HAS IMPROVED LASIK
During your consultation, you may be offered a newer diagnostic procedure, known as wavefront analysis. Wavefront technology was first developed for high-powered telescopes, to sharpen the image of distant stars that were distorted by the earth's atmosphere.
More recently, the technology has been applied to the correction of human vision. In 2002, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the use of wavefront-guided LASIK surgery, also known as Custom LASIK. This technology allows the surgeon to custom sculpt the cornea, correcting vision problems more accurately and with fewer side effects.
Wavefront: A Better Diagnostic Tool
The advantage to wavefront-guided LASIK is that it does a much better job of diagnosing the aberrations in your eyes. Traditional LASIK measurements are based on only one point in the eye and correct lower-order aberrations. However, wavefront analysis measures 200 different points in the eye, providing a much better map of the eye's imperfections, including higher-order aberrations. As noted in chapter 1, higher-order aberrations include problems with visual crispness, clarity, and sensitivity contrast. With the data from the wavefront analysis, the ophthalmologist can now perform LASIK surgery that detects, measures, and corrects both low-order and higher-order aberrations.
How Does Wavefront Analysis Work?
