Biomechanical Responses of Different Cap Thicknesses of Corneas After Small Incision Lenticule Extraction: Finite Element Analysis

This study analyzed the biomechanical responses of different corneal cap thicknesses after small incision lenticule extraction (SMILE). Individual finite element models of myopic eyes were constructed based on the clinical data. Then, four types of corneal cap thicknesses after SMILE were included for each model. The biomechanical effects of material parameters and intraocular pressure on corneas with different cap thicknesses were analyzed. When the cap thickness increased, the vertex displacements of the anterior and posterior corneal surfaces decreased slightly. The corneal stress distributions demonstrated little change. Regarding wave-front aberrations caused by the displacements of the anterior surface, the absolute defocus value decreased slightly, but the magnitude of primary spherical aberration increased slightly. The horizontal coma increased, and the levels of other low-order and high-order aberrations were small and demonstrated little change. The corneal vertex displacement and wave-front aberration were significantly affected by elastic modulus and intraocular pressure, whereas the corneal stress distribution was greatly affected by intraocular pressure. There were obvious individual differences in the biomechanical responses of human eyes. The biomechanical difference of different corneal cap thicknesses after SMILE was small. The effect of corneal cap thickness was significantly less than that resulting from material parameters and intraocular pressure. Individual models were constructed based on the clinical data. The elastic modulus was controlled by programming to simulate its heterogeneous distribution in the actual human eye. The simulation was improved to bridge the gap between basic research and clinical care.