MEASUREMENT OF MONOCHROMATIC OCULAR ABERRATIONS OF HUMAN EYES AS A FUNCTION OF ACCOMMODATION BY THE HOWLAND ABERROSCOPE TECHNIQUE

Further development of the objective version of the Howland and Howlan d [(1976) Science, 193, 580-582; (1977) Journal of the Optical Society of America, 67, 1508-1518] aberroscope technique for measuring ocular aberrations is described. Compensation for refractive corrections and calibration is discussed. The technique was used to investigate the e ffect of accommodation upon the monochromatic aberrations of the right eyes of 15 subjects. Coma and coma-like aberrations were the dominant aberrations for most people at different accommodation levels, thus c onfirming previous findings. Variations in aberrations were considerab le between subjects. About half the subjects showed the classical tren d towards negative spherical aberration with accommodation. Changes in spherical aberration with accommodation in this study were less than that found in previous studies where all monochromatic aberration was considered to be spherical aberration.