The History of CustomLASIK

The concept of WaveFront Analysis existed long before the surgery was ever even developed! In the 1900's, Johannes Hartmann, and astrophysicist devised a method of measuring ray arberrations of mirrors and lenses. We wanted to isolate each ray of light so they could be traced, and imperfections could be determined. He did this by using a metal disk with regularly spaced holes. The disk was placed over the mirror, and a photographic plate was positioned near the focus of the mirror. When light shown upon the contraption, a perfect mirror would produce the same regularly spaced holes. An imperfect mirror would show irregularities in the shadows the holes produced.

Much later, around 1971, Dr. Roland Shack and Dr. Ben Platt replaced that same screen with a sensor - today, known as the Hartmann-Shack Sensor. It was Dr. Josef Bille who first used this sensor for the field of opthalmology. Later, Dr. Junzhong Liang and Dr. David Williams would build upon eachothers acheivements with the sensor until the early version of the Wavefront Analyzer was developed for clinic purposes. Since then, the Wavefront Analyzer was automated, resulting in increased speed and accuracy.

In 1997, Dr. Williams and Liang presented the potential of the Wavefront Analyzer to The Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology. Manfacturers such as VISX and Bausch & Lomb quickly picked up on the possibilty of using the Analyzer to correct refractive vision problems.