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Annual Review of Vision Science

Volume 10, 2024

The Role of Chromatic Aberration in Vision

  • Timothy J. Gawne1 and Martin S. Banks2
  • 1Department of Optometry and Vision Science, University of Alabama, Birmingham, Alabama, USA; email: [email protected] 2Herbert Wertheim School of Optometry and Vision Science, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
  • Vol. 10:199-212 (Volume publication date September 2024)
  • First published as a Review in Advance on June 19, 2024
  • Copyright © 2024 by the author(s).
    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. See credit lines of images or other third-party material in this article for license information.

Abstract

The study of biological optics would be complicated enough if light only came in a single wavelength. However, altering the wavelength (or distribution of wavelengths) of light has multiple effects on optics, including on diffraction, scattering (of various sorts), transmission through and reflection by various media, fluorescence, and waveguiding properties, among others. In this review, we consider just one wavelength-dependent optical effect: longitudinal chromatic aberration (LCA). All vertebrate eyes that have been tested have significant LCA, with shorter (bluer) wavelengths of light focusing closer to the front of the eye than longer (redder) wavelengths. We consider the role of LCA in the visual system in terms of both how it could degrade visual acuity and how biological systems make use of it.

Keyword(s): accommodation, chromatic aberration, depth perception, emmetropization, visual acuity
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2024-09-18
2025-06-15
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The Role of Chromatic Aberration in Vision
Annual Review of Vision Science 10, 199 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-vision-101222-052228
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-vision-101222-052228
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-vision-101222-052228
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