The contribution of the fixational eye movements to the variability of the measured ocular aberration

The purpose of this work is to analyze the contribution of eye movements to the variability of the Zernike coefficients as determined with a Hartmann–Shack aberrometer. In order to isolate this effect we considered static aberrations tied to the eye pupil. We used several eye movements of different magnitude, both synthetic and corresponding to actual series recorded in our laboratory with different subjects. Our results show the relevance of the modal coupling induced by the estimation process and the benefit of correcting eye movements in order to get a better estimate of the ocular aberrations. They also show that eye movements during aberrometric measurements are an important source of apparent wavefront variability.