Research at the University of Rochester Eye Institute

Optical Quality of the Eye

Presently, cornea disease points to corneal transplantation.

The wavefront sensing program studies the pre-surgery wavefront aberrations in the eyes of refractive surgery patients, and how those aberrations can be minimized by the development of improved refractive surgery procedures. This project will be relocated to the new UREI Ground Floor within two years, where the physiological optics research space will be immediately adjacent to the refractive surgery clinic. This project involves Dr. David Williams of the Center for Visual Sciences and Drs. Scott MacRae, Krystel Huxlin and Geunyoung Yoon and William Fischer of the Ophthalmology Department.

The cornea research program involves several faculty. Dr. Geunyoung Yoon and Dr. James Aquavella study the optical properties of the highly aberrated corneas of patients with corneal diseases such as keratoconus, and are developing methods to treat those diosrders. Dr. Yoon is also developing methods to adapt the methods of wavefrong sensing (above ) to the manuafacture of contact lenses that can provide customized correction of high order refractive errors. Drs. James Zavislan and James Aquavella are measuring the optical properties of the tear film, with the goal of developing methods for the amelioration of tear film abnormalities such as dry eye. This group uses wavefrong sensing, optical coherence tomography (OCT) and polarimetry to make these measurements.