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There are two different technologies available for LASIK now. They are not equal and have different values to the patients who are planning to undergo LASIK eye surgery.

The first type of iris technology is simply iris identification software. This type of technology was adopted by the Bausch and Lomb Zyoptix laser and other excimer laser brands. This is simply an identification feature that decides if the wavefront treatment is being performed on the correct eye.

It does not provide any benefit to the patient in terms of the actual treatment. It only prevents the surgeon from accidentally operating upon the wrong eye. While this is certainly helpful, as far as I am aware of there are no cases that have been shared in which a surgeon accidentally operated on the wrong eye. While this is certainly a possibility, every surgeon that I have met has created sufficient pre-operative protocols to prevent this from happening.

Unfortunately, the iris identification also requires additional time during the LASIK surgery. This can be particularly troublesome when it occurs during a surgery. The surgeon wants to spend as little time as possible to avoid the chance of contamination during LASIK surgery.

Another technology that is being offered by VISX and perhaps other excimer lasers is the Iris registration. This technology not only identifies the iris but also rotates the treatment to match any iris rotation that may have occurred. Since the eye is known to cyclorotate during surgery, this can be a benefit, especially in cases of high astigmatism or significant wavefront treatment due to significant higher order aberrations.

Here is some further information about the VISX Iris Registration Technology:

• As a part of the VISX CustomVue wavefront-guided laser vision correction procedure, accurate alignment of the treatment to the cornea is essential for optimal outcomes.
• Iris Registration Technology is a non-contact method of aligning the treatment to the cornea that provides greater laser alignment accuracy.
• Iris Registration enables the physician to image the iris and creates a new level of confidence in the accurate placement of the correct treatment on the patient’s eye.

The Key Patient Benefits of VISX Iris Registration Technology
• It’s normal for the pupil to shift positions from the point of wavefront measurement to the point of treatment.
• Accurate alignment is essential to optimizing customized wavefront-guided ablations, and the VISX Iris Registration Technology makes it easer than ever with a fully automated method.
• When the CustomVue procedure is performed, the Iris Registration Technology centers the treatment correctly, independent of changes in the pupil center from measurement to treatment.
• VISX Iris Registration Technology makes it easier than ever to achieve accurate alignment with a fully automated, touch-free method of measuring and marking the eye.

How does VISX Iris Registration Technology work?
One set of measurements are taken with the patient seated at the WaveScan, and another set taken with the patient lying down on the laser bed. Then, the technology employs a five-step iris registration process:
1. The system maps the iris.
2. The system then selects prominent reference points for each iris.
3. Using a set of sophisticated algorithms, the system finds multiple matching reference points for each iris.
4. The system then calculates the treatment surface angles from multiple matching reference points.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006 at 4:12 pm and is filed under LASIK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.