adaptive optics providing humans with superior vision as good as 20/4!

http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc97/11_15_97/bob1.htm


http://www.opt.indiana.edu/people/faculty/miller/SVision.html


http://doemedicalsciences.org/abt/optics/olivier.shtml


excerpt:

Ultimately, typical vision could be improved from the currently normal
20/20 to "supernormal" 20/8. *OMG says Ace*



Max points out that adaptive optics are also used in vision science to
compensate for aberrations in the eye that affect vision and impede
efforts to study the living retina. Adaptive optics has made it
possible to obtain images of the living human retina with unprecedented
resolution, enabling researchers to see individual light receptors.
Adaptive optics may also provide normal eyes with supernormal vision. A
team of Livermore researchers led by Olivier is developing a
high-resolution liquid-crystal adaptive optics system for human vision
correction that will be used at UC Davis to study the limits of human
visual acuity.


http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?id=80899

http://www.journalofvision.org/1/1/1/article.aspx


'Super vision' and refractive surgery

Ophthalmologists already use wavefront sensors to develop custom
corrections for patients undergoing refractive surgery, but the main
goal usually has been to achieve nominally perfect 20/20 vision. A more
ambitious and controversial idea, originally suggested by Williams and
two colleagues in 1997, is to use adaptive optics to measure
higher-order aberrations, and correct them to provide "super
vision" more acute than is possible normally.4

This idea excited the refractive-surgery community, which saw a
potentially lucrative new market in improving vision beyond what was
once considered perfection. Williams now worries that the potential of
surgical correction for higher-order aberrations is being overplayed
for most people. The technique is attractive for people with severe
higher-order aberrations that are otherwise hard to correct. "If you
enter the office with a lot of higher-order aberrations, this
customized vision correction can reduce those aberrations and give you
a better result," he says. However, he warns that the refractive
surgery also introduces new aberrations, so patients who start with
only small high-order aberrations will likely have stronger aberrations
after surgery.


My comments: This goes to show that laser surgury induces aberrations
in every eye. Normal virgin eyes that arent highly aberrated will end
worse off.


http://www.aao.org/aao/news/eyenet/archive/01_00/cover.html


My comments: Note that adaptive optics can measure aberrations and the
mirrors can correct most to at least 20/10 if their retina is capable.
But laser surgury induces more aberrations so your vision actually
decreases!