Improving Vision with Scleral Lenses Using Higher Order Aberration Correction

If you have tried scleral lenses but are still experiencing halos, starbursts, streaks, glare, ghosting, or blurry night vision, we may be able to help. These symptoms can be frustrating, especially when standard lens designs improve comfort or fit but do not fully address the quality of your vision.

At Factoria Eye Clinic, we use advanced diagnostic technology and specialty scleral lens designs to help patients with complex vision concerns, including keratoconus, corneal scarring, post-surgical irregularities, and other corneal conditions. For some patients, correcting higher order aberrations (HOA) can help improve visual clarity beyond what traditional prescriptions, glasses, or standard scleral lenses can achieve.

What Are Higher Order Aberrations?

Higher order aberrations, often called HOAs, are small irregularities in the eye’s optical system. Unlike nearsightedness, farsightedness, or regular astigmatism, these distortions usually cannot be fully corrected with standard glasses, traditional soft contact lenses, or even standard scleral lenses.

HOAs may come from the cornea, the natural lens inside the eye, or other parts of the visual pathway. Because these irregularities are subtle, they may not always be detected during a routine refraction. However, they can still have a noticeable impact on real-world vision, especially in dim lighting, while driving at night, or when looking at lights.

How HOAs Affect Visual Clarity

When light enters a healthy, evenly shaped eye, it should focus clearly on the retina. With higher order aberrations, light scatters instead of focusing in one clean point. This can make vision feel hazy, doubled, streaked, distorted, or unstable.

HOAs are often seen in patients with irregular corneas or complex eye conditions, including:

•          Keratoconus

•          Pellucid marginal degeneration

•          Corneal scarring or trauma

•          Keratoglobus

•          Irregularities after LASIK, corneal transplant, or other eye surgery

For these patients, the goal is not only to improve the prescription. The goal is to improve the way light enters and focuses through the eye, which can make vision feel clearer, sharper, and more natural.

How the OVITZ Measures Optical Distortion

The OVITZ X-Wave Aberrometer measures the eye’s full optical wavefront, which means it analyzes how light travels through the entire visual system - not just the front surface of the cornea. This allows us to identify both lower order aberrations, such as nearsightedness and astigmatism, and higher order aberrations that can cause glare, halos, starbursts, ghosting, reduced contrast, and poor night vision.

What makes the X-Wave especially valuable for specialty lens care is that it captures a highly detailed optical fingerprint of each eye. It measures subtle distortions that standard refractions, eye charts, and traditional corneal maps may not fully explain. The system also helps determine the specific pattern and orientation of these aberrations, which is important because accurate HOA correction depends on aligning the correction properly within the lens.

Custom Scleral Lenses for HOA Correction

OVITZ technology takes HOA correction even further by incorporating wavefront-guided optics into the lens design. These premium custom scleral lenses are made to address extremely small optical imperfections that may remain even with a standard scleral lens.

This wavefront data can then be used in the design of custom wavefront-guided scleral lenses. Instead of only creating a lens that vaults over an irregular cornea, the technology allows the lens design to include precise optical corrections based on the patient’s unique aberration profile.

See More Clearly with Advanced HOA Correction

Advanced scleral lenses can help reduce glare and halos, improve contrast sensitivity, enhance depth perception, and create clearer, more natural vision. This level of HOA correction can be life-changing for patients who have struggled for years with distorted or unreliable vision, even after trying other lens options.

Schedule a consultation at Factoria Eye Clinic to learn how advanced HOA correction and scleral lenses can help improve your visual clarity. Visit our office in Bellevue, Washington, or call (425) 641-2020 to book an appointment today.