Glenn A. Fry Award Lecture 1991: perceptual manifestations of imperfect optics in the human eye: attempts to correct for ocular chromatic aberration.

The profession of optometry has been very successful in providing optical corrections for spherocylindrical refractive errors. In this paper, I examine one attempt to improve retinal image quality beyond that afforded by a standard refractive correction. Ocular chromatic aberration is one of the factors that prevent retinal image quality from reaching the upper limit set by the wave nature of light. It can be subdivided into three primary aberrations (wavelength-dependent differences in imaging plane, image position, and image size). We have been able to measure all three of these using psychophysical techniques. Although attempts to provide an optical correction for wavelength-dependent refractive errors have been optically successful, they have failed to improve vision. Several possible explanations are given for this failure.