Visual optics
Our research
Senior scientists: Linda Lundström, Peter Unsbo
We investigate the system of the human eye with the aim of understanding and improving the function of peripheral vision.
Visual optics is the science of how the optics of the eye forms an image that is then detected and interpreted by the retina and the brain. The field has advanced fast during the last decades due to the advent of wavefront sensing and adaptive optics correction. The visual optics group at KTH plays a central role in developing these techniques for the off-axis optical errors of the human eye and for psychophysical evaluation of the peripheral visual function.
Apart from basic research, we investigate the peripheral optical errors within several applications. First, the importance of intact peripheral vision throughout life is increasing with the aging of the population and proper correction also of peripheral errors can enhance visual quality of optical aids (such as spectacles, contact lenses and intraocular lenses). This can be of great importance for people with central visual field loss (caused by, e.g., macular degeneration) for whom we have found improvements of up to two lines when providing proper spectacle correction. Second, loss of peripheral vision is a clear indicator of many sight-treating ocular diseases, such as glaucoma. We investigate the normal aging process of the peripheral visual functions to enable earlier detection and thereby more efficient treatment. Third, the image quality on the peripheral retina is one of the factors that control the growth of the eye and thereby the progression of myopia. We are therefore investigating how optical aberrations affect the retinal image quality in the young growing eye and how asymmetries related to the sign of peripheral defocus can be used in myopia control interventions. The major funding sources for our research are the Swedish Research Council and the European Union Marie Curie projects OpAL , MyFUN , and the current current ACTIVA , but we also recieve support from Ögonfonden and Stiftelsen KMA .
We are recruiting children in the Stockholm area for myopia studies: Inbjudan (pdf 101 kB) Info vårdnadshavare (pdf 113 kB) Info ungdom (pdf 111 kB) Info barn (pdf 104 kB)