Influence of Stiles-Crawford effect apodization on spatial visual performance with decentered pupils

Using theoretical estimates of the optical-transfer function and line-sprea d function as image-quality criteria, we predicted the influence of the Sti les-Crawford effect (SCE) on both optical performance of the eye and subjec tive measurements of transverse aberrations when pupils are decentered. The SCE was modeled as a pupil apodization. The SCE appears to improve image q uality by providing compensation for aberrations induced by pupil decentrat ion, but this improvement is usually small. When a criterion of the placeme nt of the image is used as the centroid of the line-spread function, an ave rage SCE reduces the influence of pupil decentration on subjective transver se chromatic aberrations (TCA's) for 5-mm-diameter pupils by 30%. This redu ction is much less than that obtained by previous experimental studies of T CA, and possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed. Decentering th e SCE produces an appreciable shift in subjective TCA for 5-mm-diameter pup ils of 1.4 are min per 1-mm decentration (at wavelengths 433 and 622 nm). ( C) 2001 Optical Society of America.