Vol. 47, Issue 3, pp. 341-350

Abstract

In modern ophthalmology the natural eye lens is sometimes replaced with an artificial implant – intraocular lens which remains in the eye for a long time. This can lead to the formation of numerous microdefects occurring on the intraocular lens surface or inside its volume. The most common include calcium deposits or microvacuoles referred to as glistenings. The presence of those defects causes deterioration of retinal image thus lowering the quality of vision. The purpose of this research is to develop a numerical model of human eye with intraocular lens burden with defects useful to predict the impact of calcium deposits and glistenings on the retinal image quality. The calculations made in accordance with this model suggest that the quality of retinal image deteriorates when the density of defects increases, but the degree of image deterioration does not depend on the location of the defects and transmittance of individual particles. The main deterioration effect is observed for low spatial frequencies (< 12 cycles/deg) both in case of calcium deposits and glistenings while for the spatial frequency of 30 cycles/deg the changes in modulation transfer function are insignificant. The presence of microvacuoles in the intraocular lens influences the worsening of modulation transfer function parameters only for the diameter of microvacuoles greater than 10 μm.