Cwhatuc: A Visual Acuity Simulator

CWhatUC (pronounced "see what you see") is a computer software system which will predict a patient's visual acuity using several techniques based on fundamentals of geometric optics. The scientific visualizations we propose can be clustered into two classes: retinal representations and corneal representations; however, in this paper, we focus our discussion on corneal representations. It is important to note that, for each method listed below, we can illustrate the visual acuity with or without spectacle correction. Corneal representations are meant to reveal how well the cornea focuses parallel light onto the fovea of the eye by providing a pseudo-colored display of various error metrics. These error metrics could be:a) standard curvature representations, such as instantaneous or axial curvature, converted to refractive power maps by taking Snell's law into accountb) the focusing distance from each refracted ray's average focus to the computed foveac) the retinal distance on the retinal plane from each refracted ray to the chief ray (lateral spherical aberration)For each error metric, we show both real and simulated data, and illustrate how each representation contributes to the simulation of visual acuity.