Our laser

The Importance of the Laser System
The purpose of all laser surgery equipment is to provide the tools to allow your doctor to reshape your cornea. The reshaping involved is microscopic. In fact, your doctor will be viewing your eyes through a microscope as he performs the procedure. So it follows that the smaller and more precise the laser beam, the more precisely your cornea can be reshaped.

An artist's brush is a good analogy. The smaller the brush, the finer, and more detailed the result.

It may surprise you to know that the laser beams generated by different laser eye surgery systems can vary considerably, both in their shape, size and nature. So this is another important technological feature you should ask your doctor about.

The Wavelight 400EQ  laser system employs a flying small-spot beam that's just 0.8mm wide, less than the width of a human hair. So it's capable of removing your corneal tissue in very small or "subtle" increments, in both traditional and CustomCornea® treatments. The result is a fine, gradual reshaping of the cornea, which leaves the surface of the corrected area smooth. This type of beam provides the surgeon with the ability to place laser pulses precisely where they are needed to provide you with a completely customized CustomCornea® procedure.

Our tracking device

One of the challenges in laser vision correction is that your eyes are never perfectly still. Although you will be asked to focus on a blinking light for the duration of your procedure, your eyes can move as much as 100 times a second without you being aware of it — or able to control it. These are known as involuntary or saccadic eye movements.

To overcome this, some manufacturers of laser eye surgery equipment offer eye tracking devices to keep up with your eye movements, compensate for them and direct the laser beam to the correct spot on your cornea. Some laser systems have no tracking devices at all. Other tracking devices may not be fast enough to compensate for your involuntary eye movements — remember, there could be as many as 100 such movements every second.


Whether your procedure is traditional LASIK or our new CustomCornea® approach, the Wavelight 400EQ  tracking device follows your eye every second of the procedure. In fact, it's tracked 4,000 times per second - 30 times faster than any other system. Because of the use of the Wavelight 400EQ  tracking device, you can be confident that the laser beam is being applied to precisely the right spot, and that your cornea is being reshaped with extreme accuracy. What's more, the Wavelight 400EQ   tracking device utilizes what's known as closed loop technology, which compensates for your eye movements through continuous, constant "feedback" on the location of the eye. In other words, closed loop tracking not only tells the laser where the eye is now, it also tells the laser where the eye will be at the precise moment when the laser is applied. This may sound technical — and it is — but it makes a very significant, practical difference in the accuracy with which your cornea is reshaped. So be sure to ask your doctor about the eye tracking capabilities of the laser surgery equipment he or she uses as you compare laser surgery systems. Along with the technology it uses to diagnose vision problems and the nature of the laser beam itself, these factors have an important relationship to the eventual outcome of your laser vision correction procedure.

 
Common vision problems like nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatism are normally diagnosed through an eye test in basically the same way as they have been since the 1880s. Your optometrist uses a printed or projected image called a Snellen chart to determine problems with your vision that are measured in diopters. These diopter measurements tell your optometrist how much correction is required — and the glasses or contact lenses he or she prescribes correspond to these diopter values.

 

 

Prior to a traditional LASIK procedure, your surgeon will use the same type of information used to prescribe your existing glasses or contacts to help determine how your cornea needs to be reshaped to help correct your vision, and where the laser beam should be directed to accomplish that reshaping.

But these common vision disorders, which are collectively known as lower order aberrations, are not the only problems that could be affecting your vision. There are also problems — called higher order aberrations — that are widely believed by ophthalmic experts to be responsible for common night vision problems, including glare and halos.

Higher order aberrations cannot be corrected using contacts, glasses or LASIK.

Thanks to an exciting new procedure, called CustomCornea®, the Wavelight 400EQ  System can treat both lower order and higher order aberrations.

Using a component of the Wavelight 400EQ  System known as the LADARWave® wavefront device, your doctor can diagnose and measure higher order aberrations in your vision by creating wavefront maps.

Wavefront mapping plots the visual disturbances in your eye by passing a narrow ray of eye-safe light through the optical system and measuring the optical distortion as the light exits the eye. These patterns are then compared to the maps associated with normal vision.

If you've ever experienced problems in low-light situations like glare or halos, it's a good idea when choosing your doctor that you find one that can accurately measure and diagnose your vision disorders with the LADARWave® wavefront device. Such a doctor will be able to offer you customized vision correction with the CustomCornea® procedure using the Wavelight 400EQ System.

Another technological factor you should consider when comparing different laser eye surgery systems is the laser system itself.