METHOD OF TREATING THE HUMAN EYE WITH A WAVEFRONT SENSOR-BASED OPHTHALMIC INSTRUMENT

An improved method for treating the eye includes the step of providing an ophthalmic instrument including an integral wavefront sensor. The wavefront sensor measures phase aberrations in reflections directed thereto to characterize aberrations of the eye. The wavefront sensor may be operably coupled to a display device, which displays a graphical representation of the aberrations of the eye. Such graphical representation may include: two dimensional contour maps that graphically depict contribution of pre-specified terms (such as spherical aberration, astigmatism and coma) for the aberrations of the eye, coefficients corresponding to such pre-specified terms that characterize the aberrations of the eye, or predefined two-dimensional icons that provide a general graphical depiction of such pre-specified terms. Such graphical representations provide the practitioner with valuable information characterizing the high order optical errors of the eye (which is far beyond the diopter information typically provided by current ophthalmic instruments) for use in diagnosis and treatment of abnormalities and disease in the eye. In addition, the wavefront sensor may be part of an adaptive optical subsystem that compensates for the phase aberrations measured therein to provide phase-aligned images of the eye for capture by an image capture subsystem. Such images may be used by practitioner in diagnosis and treatment of abnormalities and disease in the eye.