Imperfect optics may be the eye's defence against chromatic blur

James S. McLellan (), Susana Marcos, Pedro M. Prieto and Stephen A. Burns
Additional contact information
James S. McLellan: Schepens Eye Research Institute
Susana Marcos: Schepens Eye Research Institute
Pedro M. Prieto: Schepens Eye Research Institute
Stephen A. Burns: Schepens Eye Research Institute

Nature, 2002, vol. 417, issue 6885, 174-176

Abstract: Abstract The optics of the eye cause different wavelengths of light to be differentially focused at the retina. This phenomenon is due to longitudinal chromatic aberration, a wavelength-dependent change in refractive power1. Retinal image quality may consequently vary for the different classes of cone photoreceptors, cells tuned to absorb bands of different wavelengths. For instance, it has been assumed that when the eye is focused for mid-spectral wavelengths near the peak sensitivities of long- (L) and middle- (M) wavelength-sensitive cones, short-wavelength (bluish) light is so blurred that it cannot contribute to and may even impair spatial vision2,3. These optical effects have been proposed to explain the function of the macular pigment4, which selectively absorbs short-wavelength light, and the sparsity of short-wavelength-sensitive (S) cones5. However, such explanations have ignored the effect of monochromatic wave aberrations present in real eyes. Here we show that, when these effects are taken into account, short wavelengths are not as blurred as previously thought, that the potential image quality for S cones is comparable to that for L and M cones, and that macular pigment has no significant function in improving the retinal image.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/417174a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:417:y:2002:i:6885:d:10.1038_417174a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/417174a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().