AMO DEVELOPMENT, LLC

A method used in a corneal lenticule procedure for finding the visual axis location before eye docking, to track the visual axis location displacement during docking, and to center the lenticule incision pattern at the visual axis location after docking, without ink-marking the visual axis location at the center of the cornea with ink or other substance. Two docking illumination beams are illuminated on the eye surface at oblique angles, and a first eye image is taken before docking while the eye looks at the fixation light of the laser system. A second eye image is taken after docking. The pre-docking cornea apex position is obtained based on the two reflected light spots of the docking illumination light. Pupil center is obtained in both images. The post-docking corneal apex is then calculated from the pre-docking cornea apex position and the pre- and post-docking pupil center positions.

An ophthalmic surgical laser system includes: a laser that produces a pulsed laser beam having a pulse energy and pulse repetition rate; a high frequency fast scanner; an XY-scan device; a Z-scan device; and a controller. The controller controls the high frequency scanner to produce a scan line having a scan width; controls the XY-scan device and the Z-scan device to carry out of first sweep of the scan line in a first sweep direction and to carry out a second sweep of the scan line in a second sweep direction that is not parallel to the first sweep direction thereby defining an overlap region. At least one of the pulse energy, repetition rate, XY-scan speed, and the scan width is varied so as to accelerate the cutting speed and reduce the exposure of ophthalmic tissue in the overlap region to multiple exposures of laser pulses configured to modify ophthalmic tissue.

A method of altering a refractive property of a crosslinked acrylic polymer material by irradiating the material with a high energy pulsed laser beam to change its refractive index. The method is used to alter the refractive property, and hence the optical power, of an implantable intraocular lens after implantation in the patient's eye. In some examples, the wavelength of the laser beam is in the far red and near IR range and the light is absorbed by the crosslinked acrylic polymer via two-photon absorption at high laser pulse energy. The method also includes designing laser beam scan patterns that compensate for effects of multiphone absorption such as a shift in the depth of the laser pulse absorption location, and compensate for effects caused by high laser pulse energy such as thermal lensing. The method can be used to form a Fresnel lens in the optical zone.

A method of treating a lens of a patient's eye includes generating a light beam, deflecting the light beam using a scanner to form a treatment pattern of the light beam, delivering the treatment pattern to the lens of a patient's eye to create a plurality of cuts in the lens in the form of the treatment pattern to break the lens up into a plurality of pieces, and removing the lens pieces from the patient's eye. The lens pieces can then be mechanically removed. The light beam can be used to create larger segmenting cuts into the lens, as well as smaller softening cuts that soften the lens for easier removal.

A method for treating presbyopia of a crystalline lens using a femtosecond laser system, operated in a parameter regime characterized by extremely short pulse duration (below 100 fs) and low pulse energy (sub-μJ) of the pulses delivered to the lens tissue. The laser beam has a small focal volume in the tissue that is achieved by the short spatial pulse length, rather than defined by the large depth of focus resulting from the low numerical aperture of the laser beam. The laser energy density within the small focal volume (below 50 μm 3 ) is sufficiently high to induce optical breakdown of the tissue, which reduces the Young's modulus of the lens to improve accommodation, thereby reducing presbyopia. Meanwhile, the total pulse energy in the focal volume is sufficiently low, resulting in small cavitation bubbles, which reduce light scattering and other damage or undesirable effects in the treated lens tissue.

An ophthalmic laser system and related method for performing corneal lenticule incision and extraction for treating hyperopia and mixed astigmatism of the eye are described. Various techniques are used to optimize the procedure for concave lenticule incisions. One technique employs a fast-scan-slow-sweep scanning scheme to form the lenticule incisions, where the sweep angle increment is set to ensure at least double-pass cut for the entire lenticule. Another technique allows for desired distribution of refractive powers between the top and bottom lenticule incisions. Other techniques configure the lenticule such that its edge thickness is a constant; or such that the highest point of the top lenticule incision, located near the lenticule periphery, is at a predefined depth below the anterior corneal surface; or to maximize lenticule thickness for refractive treatment while ensuring that minimum anterior depth and minimum residual bed thickness in the peripheral region of the lenticule are maintained.

Methods and apparatus are configures to measure an eye without contacting the eye with a patient interface, and these measurements are used to determine alignment and placement of the incisions when the patient interface contacts the eye. The pre-contact locations of one or more structures of the eye can be used to determine corresponding post-contact locations of the one or more optical structures of the eye when the patient interface has contacted the eye, such that the laser incisions are placed at locations that promote normal vision of the eye. The incisions are positioned in relation to the pre-contact optical structures of the eye, such as an astigmatic treatment axis, nodal points of the eye, and visual axis of the eye.

A method of cataract surgery in an eye of a patient includes identifying a feature selected from the group consisting of an axis, a meridian, and a structure of an eye by corneal topography and forming fiducial mark incisions with a laser beam along the axis, meridian or structure in the cornea outside the optical zone of the eye. A laser cataract surgery system a laser source, a topography measurement system, an integrated optical subsystem, and a processor in operable communication with the laser source, corneal topography subsystem and the integrated optical system. The processor includes a tangible non-volatile computer readable medium comprising instructions to determine one of an axis, meridian and structure of an eye of the patient based on the measurements received from topography measurement system, and direct the treatment beam so as to incise radial fiducial mark incisions.

A laser surgical method for performing a corneal incision while maintaining iris exposure below a predetermined exposure limit includes: determining an initial iris exposure based on an initial treatment scan, determining whether the initial iris exposure is less than the predetermined exposure limit, generating a revised treatment scan comprising one or more treatment scan modifying elements when the initial iris exposure is greater than the predetermined exposure limit, and scanning the focal zone of a pulsed laser beam according to the revised treatment scan, thereby performing the corneal incision, wherein the one or more treatment scan modifying elements causes the iris exposure to be smaller than the predetermined exposure limit.

A patient interface device for an ophthalmic surgical laser system includes a lens cone component for coupling to the laser system and a suction ring component having a flexible skirt for coupling to the patient's eye. The suction ring component includes a gripper integrated with the flexible skirt, formed of hard plastic material and having two jaws that face each other to define a receiving opening between them. During use, a base portion of the lens cone is inserted into the receiving opening of the gripper and retained by the clamping force of the jaws. To ensure that the gripper securely retains the lens cone, a soft thermoplastic elastomer material is provided on the outer surface of the base portion of the lens cone, and the inner surfaces of the jaws of the gripper are provided with teeth to engage the soft thermoplastic elastomer material of the lens cone.