Towards customized intraocular lenses

In the eye there are two refractive components that make light focus on the retina and let you see: the cornea and the lens. When a eye develops cataract the lens becomes caractarous and is removed and replaced with a synthetic intraocular lens during a cataract surgery procedure. Although there was only one general intraocular lens used when this procedure was first developed, nowadays the properties of the lens can be specified to correct the sphere of the eye and in some cases even the cylinder can be compensated, much like with contacts or glasses. However, each eye suffers from some smaller, local defects in the refraction of the light as well, due to the imperfections in the shape of the cornea. In general these aberrations are of such a small magnitude that it is completely unnoticable for the patient. Whenever the cornea is damaged due to illness or refractive surgery however, the abberations can heavily affect the comfort and visual performance of the patient. Theoratically this problem could be solved when a customized intraocular lens would be implanted during the cataract surgery procedure, much like the focus of the intraocular lens is already customized for the eye. In this thesis I present several findings I did with the final gaol of developing customized intraocular lenses.