Purpose:

To quantify the actual impact of longitudinal chromatic aberration (LCA) in pseudophakic eyes with different IOL materials & optics, and to test the hypothesis that, in the presence of typical levels of monochromatic aberrations, LCA modulation has no significant clinical effect on polychromatic image quality.

Methods:

Polychromatic point spread functions and optical transfer functions were computed for a flat spectrum white light in model eyes containing monochromatic and chromatic aberrations typical of phakic and pseudophakic eyes. Monochromatic aberrations, defined by a vector of Zernike coefficients, varied from zero (aberration-free model) to the mean and to 2 standard deviations above the mean expected from the cornea and common aspheric IOL designs. LCA modulation was evaluated for different IOL models.

Results:

The impact of LCA is largest in diffraction-limited eye model, but always decreases as levels of monochromatic aberration increase. LCA levels expected from pseudophakic eyes with different IOL materials and different levels of monochromatic aberrations are modelled for pupil diameters typically seen in pseudophakic patients. The effect of LCA on image quality for each model will be shown in this paper.

Conclusions:

The results of this investigation provide insights onto the true contribution of LCA in pseudophakic patients, which will help the HCP critically evaluate claims of visual performance of different IOL models on the basis of their Abbe numbers.