Informing interested parties of changes in the optical performance of the cornea caused by keratorefractive surgery: a ray-tracing model that tailors presentation of results to fit the level of sophistication of the audience

Keratorefractive surgery changes a patient's spectacle correction by altering the curve of the cornea. Often the optical performance of the cornea is degraded as a result of surgery. Clinical tests such as visual acuity testing with high contrast optotypes are too insensitive to measure how the operation degrades optical quality. Ray tracing models offer promise as a sensitive indicator of optical degradation, but unfortunately most patients and many ophthalmologists and health care analysts do not understand results from such models when they are displayed as wither Fourier representations of optical degradation or as point spread functions. To address this problem, we improved on an earlier ray tracing program that models the optical performance of the cornea so that it now presents results in whatever format is best understood by the target audience.