RAYS (Render As You See): Vision-Realistic Rendering Using Hartmann-Shack Wavefront Aberrations

RAYS (RenderAsYouSee) is a system for “vision-realistic rendering” which can simulate the vision of actual patients. Patie nt data is derived from sensors, called Hartmann-Shack devices, th at capture the wavefront aberrations present in the patient’s ent ire optical pathway of a single point source of light in the retina. The input to RAYS is an image, corresponding depth information, and a wavefront derived from the Hartmann-Shack devic e. Given a focusing distance, our vision-realistic rendering algorithm then blurs the scene appropriately. The result is an image th at closely approximates what the actual patient would have see n if focused at that distance. Vision-realistic rendering is particularly interesting i n the context of laser refractive eye surgeries such as PRK and LASIK. Currently, almost a million Americans per year are choosing to u ndergo such elective surgeries. RAYS could convey to doctors the vi sion of a patient before and after surgery. In addition, RAYS could p rovide accurate and revealing visualizations of predicted acuity and simulated vision to potential candidates for such surgeries to facilitate educated decisions about the procedure. Still another appl ic tion would be to show such candidates the possible visual anomali es that could arise from the surgery (such as glare at night). CR Categories: I.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism—Color, shading, shadowing, and textu r ; I.3.3 [Computer Graphics]: Picture/Image Generation—Dis play algorithms, Viewing algorithms;