Improvement in retinal image quality with dynamic correction of the eye's aberrations

We measured the improvement in retinal image quality provided by correcting the temporal variation in the eye's wave aberration with a closed-loop adaptive optics system. This system samples the eye's wave aberration at rates up to 30 Hz. Correction of the eye's aberrations can be completed in 0.25-0.5 seconds, resulting in residual rms wave-front errors as low as 0.1 microns for 6.8 mm pupils. Real-time wave-front measurements were used to determine how effectively the spatial and temporal components of the eye's wave aberration were corrected. The system provides dynamic correction of fluctuations in Zernike modes up to 5(th) order with temporal frequency components up to 0.8 Hz. Temporal performance is in good agreement with predictions based on theory. Correction of the temporal variation in the eye's wave aberration increases the Strehl ratio of the point spread function nearly 3 times, and increases the contrast of images of cone photoreceptors by 33% compared with images taken with only static correction of the eye's higher order aberrations. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America.