What is Wavefront Diagnosis?
Wavefront diagnosis is a new technology that allows ophthalmologists to identify your optical flaws better. It measures your eye in high detail which enables for a custom LASIK experience that allows you to put down your glasses and contact lenses for good. Wavefront diagnosis enables measurement of the detailed surface of your eye to create an extremely accurate three-dimensional map that represents your unique eye anatomy.
How is Wavefront Diagnosis Different?
Wavefront diagnosis can treat vision complications that cannot be normally treated by LASIK. While LASIK can treat low order aberrations such as nearsightedness, farsightedness, and astigmatism, it is unable to do much about high order aberrations that produce more complicated errors in our vision.
Wavefront diagnosis enables the treatment of these high order aberrations such as – double vision, visual issues related to light sources such as starbursts, glare and halos as well as contrast sensitivity.
Pros of Wavefront Diagnosis
Wavefront diagnosis measures the very shape of your eyes so your ophthalmologist can design a custom LASIK procedure suited for you. Your vision can now be corrected at a finer level of detail than was possible before. You can expect the following from your surgery:
- Improved visual clarity
- Better visual contrast
- Increased chances of achieving 20/20 vision
- Better night vision
- Lower risks of complication
With wavefront diagnosis, you benefit from the latest technology which gives you access to a more personalized treatment to correct your vision.
Applications of Wavefront Diagnosis
Originally designed for use in custom LASIK, wavefront diagnosis may be used more routinely now by ophthalmologists to be able to diagnose better problems in vision via eye exams, rendering the good old eye chart obsolete.
Eye exams are traditionally conducted with a phoropter which allows for lenses of different powers to be placed in it. Your eye doctor keeps alternating the lenses to determine which lens is most befitting for correcting your vision.
However, you can only report what you think you see in these exams as opposed to what you really see. A wavefront diagnosis remedies this, as the measurement is taken, is objective. Errors in vision can be identified almost automatically by observing the manner in which light waves travel through your eyes.
In the future, we may see wavefront measurements replace conventional eyeglass/contact lens prescriptions where problems in your vision are only described with reference to farsightedness, nearsightedness, and astigmatism.
Last Words
Wavefront technology or aberrometry records the way in which a wavefront of light travels through your cornea and you’re the crystalline lens in your eye – both of which are refractive components.
Distortions that occur in the process are called aberrations which represent some specific vision errors. A wavefront diagnosis is performed with the help of a device – called an aberrometer.
Wavefront technology can be used to treat both higher and lower order aberrations in vision. Until the discovery of this technology, there was no way to treat higher order aberrations. Traditional vision corrective treatments only successfully treated lower order aberrations.
Contact Our Office
If you’re interested in learning more about Wavefront Diagnosis, the skilled vision specialists at Patel Eye Associates can help you understand all that you need to know. Contact our office to schedule your initial consultation today!