The USC-OSA Student Chapter and USC-EPS Young Minds Section is a group financed by The Optical Society (OSA) and the European Physical Society (EPS). It is formed by PhD and degree students from the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC) and one supervisor of the Faculty of Physics. Its main goal is to promote and diffuse Optics in the society. For this purpose, the group carries out several activities in the academic and non-academic community. The group is also committed to the professional development of our members and motivates the exposition of our work into the scientific community.
We have adapted low cost webcams to the slit lamps objectives with the aim of improving contact lens fitting practice. With this solution we obtain good quality pictures and videos, we also recorded videos of eye examination, evaluation routines of contact lens fitting, and the final practice exam of our students. In addition, the video system increases the interactions between students because they could see what their colleagues are doing and take conscious of their mistakes, helping and correcting each others. We think that the proposed system is a low cost solution for supporting the training in contact lens fitting practice.
USC-OSA is a student chapter whose objective is to bring Optics knowledge closer to the non-optics community. The activity developed at the Hospital school was one of the most important last year. It was consisted in a few Optics experiments and workshops with hospitalized children of different ages and pathologies. The experiments had to be adapted to their physical conditions with the aim of everyone could participate. We think this activity has several benefits including spreading Optics through children meanwhile they have fun and forget their illness for a while.
KEYWORDS: Photonics, Projection systems, Astronomy, Mirrors, Colorimetry, Linear filtering, Social networks, Prisms, Optical filters, Education and training
The USC-OSA Student Chapter has been constituted in March 2013 by members of the University of Santiago de
Compostela (USC) in Spain and sponsored by The Optical Society of America (OSA). It is formed by five graduate and
one undergraduate students with the common interest in Optics and Photonics research and a professor of the USC is
also involved as a faculty advisor. We decided to start this group with the aim of involving kids, precollege and
undergraduate students in the world of Optics and Photonics. The activities that the USC-OSA Student Chapter members
intend to realize are mainly educational tasks for the spreading of knowledge in Photonics by means of basic
experiments, demonstrations and lectures by leading researchers and teachers. Most of the needed resources to
accomplish these activities are provided by the OSA, such as educational posters and a portable kit for demonstrating
Optics to students. At this moment the USC-OSA Student Chapter is carrying out several activities, as educational
journeys at the Santiago de Compostela University Hospital Complex (CHUS), where hospitalized children can approach
to Optics through some simple experiments and games. A teaching program is also being organized in collaboration with
Galician secondary schools in order to show students the importance and uses of Optics and Photonics and to arouse
their interest in this field, as well as encouraging them to develop their scientific thinking. Another activity will take
place in November during the Science Week, which includes a program of lectures targeted to undergraduate students
and an exposition of several demonstrations
The training in the use of the slit lamp has always been difficult for students of the degree in Optics and Optometry. Instruments with associated cameras helps a lot in this task, they allow teachers to observe and control if the students evaluate the eye health appropriately, correct use errors and show them how to do it with a visual demonstration. However, these devices are more expensive than those that do not have an integrated camera connected to a display unit. With the aim to improve students´ skills in the management of slit lamp, we have adapted USB HD webcams (Microsoft Lifecam HD-5000) to the objectives of the slit lamps available in our contact lenses laboratory room. The webcams are connected to a PC running Linux Ubuntu 11.0; therefore that is a low-cost device. Our experience shows that single method has several advantages. It allows us to take pictures with a good quality of different conditions of the eye health; we can record videos of eye evaluation and make demonstrations of the instrument. Besides it increases the interactions between students because they could see what their colleagues are doing and take conscious of the mistakes, helping and correcting each others. It is a useful tool in the practical exam too. We think that the method supports the training in optometry practice and increase the student´s confidence without a huge outlay.
Work remains to be done to understand the origins of ocular aberrations. We analyze lens aberrations of several species with Y-suture branches (bovine, ovine, and porcine) and their relationship with suture distribution. Aberrations are measured in vitro with a point diffraction interferometer in 10 different eyes of each species. The minimum number of Zernike polynomials minimizing the root mean square error of the wavefront is estimated by processing the interferograms. Through this we find significant amounts of astigmatism, coma, spherical aberration, and trefoil in the lenses of the three species. Moreover, we observe a high degree of correlation between the orientation of the lens sutures and the axis of nonrotationally symmetric aberrations. Our results point to lens sutures as the histological origin of the most significant lens aberrations: astigmatism, coma, and trefoil, but we are unable to find a major suture governing all the axes.
The main purpose of this work is to study the influence of the holding setups commonly used to measure the aberrations
of crystalline lenses. Measurements for bovine lenses were performed with a point diffraction interferometer when the
crystalline lens leans in the bottom of a glass cell filled with some preserving solution and when the lens leans over a
ring placed in the glass cell in order to avoid the contact of the lens with the cell. Significant changes were found not
only for symmetric aberrations but also for non symmetric ones.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.