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Technical note: accounting for anatomical symmetry in the first-order optical character of left and right eyes.

Harris WF

Optometric Science Research Group, Department of Optometry, University of Johannesburg, PO Box 524, Auckland Park 2006, South Africa. wharris@uj.ac.za

In quantitative analyses of the optical character of eyes (and related systems) it is sometimes necessary to deal with left and right eyes in the same context. In accounting for anatomical symmetry (mirror symmetry in the mid-sagittal plane) one treats a cylinder axis at 20 degrees , say, in a left eye as equivalent to an axis at 160 degrees in a right eye. But this is only one aspect of the linear optical character of an eye. The purpose of this note is to show how to account for anatomical symmetry in the linear optical character of eyes in general. In particular the note shows how to modify the optical properties of left (or right) eyes so that anatomical symmetry is accounted for in quantitative analyses in contexts in which both left and right eyes are involved.

Published 22 June 2007 in Ophthalmic Physiol Opt, 27(4): 412-5.
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