Wavefront aberration reconstruction from tangential refractive powers measured with spatial dynamic skiascopy.

The aim of this work was to study, using numerical simulations, the attainable level of accuracy to reconstruct the wavefront aberrations from tangential refractive power data measured with dynamic skiascopy. Two mathematical methods have been implemented. The first one is based on curve integration of the curvature data, previously interpolated with cubic splines. The second one reconstructs the three-dimensional wavefront surface, represented by a Zernike polynomial expansion, using a two-step least-squares method. The different factors affecting the reconstruction--noise, sampling, and wavefront patterns--were quantified. The results provide useful information to design more efficient experimental setups based on spatial dynamic skiascopy.