The History of CustomLASIK

Interestingly enough, one of the latest developments in the field of laser eye surgery was actually a concept long before it existed. In the 1900's, Johannes Hartmann, and astrophysicist devised a method of measuring ray aberrations of mirrors and lenses. He wanted to isolate a ray of light and use it to map imperfections over surfaces. Originally this was achieved using a metal disk with regularly spaced holes. The disk was placed over a mirror and then a photographic plate was placed where the focus of the mirror was. A mirror with a perfect surface would reflect a perfectly round shadow. An irregular mirror would show irregularities in the shadows the holes produced.

In the early 1970's Dr. Roland Shack and Dr. Ben Platt replaced that photographic screen with a sensor and today it's still known as a Hartmann-Shack Sensor.

In the late 1990's, Dr. Williams and Liang presented the potential of the Wavefront Analyzer to The Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology. Manufacturers such as VISX and Bausch & Lomb quickly picked up on the possibility of using the Analyzer to correct refractive vision problems and CustomLASIK came into being.