Wavefront technology guides and optimizes LASIK procedures and offers a more sophisticated technique for calculating optical aberrations in your vision. Ophthalmologists now have tools for assessing and treating higher as well as lower order optical aberrations .
The lower order aberrations
Traditional LASIK has treated these three conditions for many years.
- Myopia (nearsightedness)
- Hyperopia (farsightedness)
- Astigmatism (oval or irregularly shaped cornea which causes blurred or double vision)
The higher order aberrations
Wavefront-guided LASIK can do more: it diagnoses and treats these more elusive and puzzling eye conditions such as:
- Halos – radiating circles around lights at night
- Ghosting – faint duplicate images
- Double vision – more definite duplicate images
- Coma – points of light looking like little comets with blurry tails
- Glare – over-bright appearance of lights at night
These subtle visual impairments are talked about in mathematical terms and require an understanding of optics. Your LASIK surgeon can diagnose them in your vision when he examines the way light rays are reflected back from your eyes to his Wavefront system. Every human eye is unique in its combination and severity of vision features. Wavefront technology allows your eye surgeon to map your two eyes exactly, and to use those two maps to guide the laser during your procedure. That’s why it’s called Custom LASIK.
Wavefront-Guided Diagnosis
One experienced Custom LASIK surgeon is Dr. Jonathan Davidorf in West Hills, California. His website. gives more information and offers you an online form for asking your questions about it. You could also schedule a consultation to see if you might be a candidate for Wavefront-guided LASIK.
After you’re comfortably seated at the Wavefront system, you gaze at a field and focus on an object. A light is shone into your eye. These straight light waves are reflected back from your eye to the machine that sent them, but only from a perfect eye would they reflect back as straight waves. They are distorted by your eye’s particular shape. The computer in the Wavefront system converts this information into a 3-Dn optical map, showing your eye’s unique flaws.
Wavefront sensing maps out where the exiting beams of light end up and records it. The wavefront map contains almost 2,000 data points, so your doctor has an extremely detailed map of your eye.
When ophthalmologists conduct an evaluation, wavefront technology gives them personalized diagnostic information about you. Because of this, LASIK surgeons have more information on which to base an informed decision and make recommendations about your best treatment option(s). They can devise a very subtle and detailed treatment plan for you.
Wavefront-Guided Treatment
The information gathered and recorded by the Wavefront technology is used like a road map, guiding the refractive surgeon as he applies the laser for your treatment. He can sculpt the cornea so that it treats the myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism, and higher order aberrations all at the same time. The doctor is able to tailor the LASIK procedure to each individual person, making the results more exact. Wavefront technology offers people the benefits of crisper, sharper, superior-quality vision correction while at the same time reducing higher order aberration side effects such as night vision problems of glare, ghosts, or halos.
Wavefront technology accesses formerly inaccessible information. This, in turn, allows doctors to apply more precise and customized treatments.
Since LASIK is the most common form of vision correction surgery, wavefront technology makes a good thing even better by improving the results and decreasing complications. Because wavefront-guided LASIK allows ophthalmologists to customize your treatment, you can expect the highest quality of vision correction to be achieved.