Impact of Defocus and High-Order Aberrations on Light Disturbance Measurements

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of different levels of positive and negative defocus on light disturbance (LD) measures and to understand how high-order aberrations (HOAs) and topographic quality parameters may influence the perception of photic phenomena.

Methods: Thirty young healthy subjects (21 females and 9 males) attended this cross-sectional study. LD was evaluated with the light distortion analyzer (LDA) in natural accommodative and cycloplegic conditions with positive and negative induced defocus of 1.00D. HOAs were taken for a natural mesopic (without cycloplegia) and for fixed 5 mm (with cycloplegia) pupil size. The impact of corneal morphological parameters (SAI, SRI, and Q-value) in LD was also investigated.

Results: Positive and negative induced defocus of 1.00D significantly increased the size of LD ( < 0.010, Wilcoxon signed rank test) but not its irregularity index. Spherical-like HOAs were associated with the size of LD, while coma-like and total-like HOAs were associated with LD irregularity. Our results showed that SRI was significantly correlated with the size of the disturbance area (=0.519, =0.003, Spearman correlation) and SAI with both size (=0.502, =0.005, Spearman correlation) and irregularity (=0.371, =0.044, Spearman correlation). However, no correlation between the Q-value and LD parameters was found.

Conclusions: The uncorrected positive and negative refractive errors might increase the size of the LD, such as the spherical-like HOAs, SAI, and SRI, instead of asphericity. Coma-like and total-like HOAs and SAI may influence the perception of irregularities in the LD shape. These results might have an impact on postrefractive surgery visual performance that should be investigated.