Using Artificial Intelligence and Novel Polynomials to Predict Subjective Refraction

This work aimed to use artificial intelligence to predict subjective refraction from wavefront aberrometry data processed with a novel polynomial decomposition basis. Subjective refraction was converted to power vectors (M, J0, J45). Three gradient boosted trees (XGBoost) algorithms were trained to predict each power vector using data from 3729 eyes. The model was validated by predicting subjective refraction power vectors of 350 other eyes, unknown to the model. The machine learning models were significantly better than the paraxial matching method for producing a spectacle correction, resulting in a mean absolute error of 0.301 ± 0.252 Diopters (D) for the M vector, 0.120 ± 0.094 D for the J0 vector and 0.094 ± 0.084 D for the J45 vector. Our results suggest that subjective refraction can be accurately and precisely predicted from novel polynomial wavefront data using machine learning algorithms. We anticipate that the combination of machine learning and aberrometry based on this novel wavefront decomposition basis will aid the development of refined algorithms which could become a new gold standard to predict refraction objectively.