The topography of normal corneas
S. A. Dingeldein and S. D. Klyce
Lions Eye Research Laboratories, LSU Eye Center, LSU Medical Center School of Medicine, New Orleans 70112.
Previously we have analyzed photokeratographs to determine the topography
of congenital, acquired, and surgically induced deformations of corneal
shape. In this article, we survey the variety of corneal shapes found in
both eyes of 22 individuals with normal corneas. The degree of correlation
of the distribution of corneal power around the visual axis was striking
for both eyes of 18 of the 22 individuals, as was the variability of the
corneal topography of different individuals. The average centrally weighted
corneal power determined from the photokeratographs correlated well with
the average keratometric corneal power (r = .96). By defining the
topographic features characteristic of normal corneas, we will be better
able to diagnose corneal shape anomalies and understand the role such
anomalies play in the degradation of vision.
