This diagnostic platform is employed for a variety of uses including patient screening, preoperative evaluation, and follow up care. The OPD-Scan can determine the source of visual blur, qualify and quantify the components of "irregular astigmatism".

Among other uses, the OPD-Scan can be used for determining the effect of corneal and intraocular procedures, following the wavefront and refractive progression of a cataract, CL fitting or the effect of pharmacological constriction of the pupil. Additionally it can increase patient flow and reduce chair time with the patient.

The NIDEK OPD-Scan simultaneously measures wavefront and topography using the principles of retinoscopy and placido disk. This ensures the maps are aligned and registered with respect to each other.

This facilitates the correlation of corneal contribution to the wavefront aberrations of eye and the internal contribution to wavefront.

Wavefront
The OPD-Scan uses a unique measurement principle, based on retinoscopy, called "spatial dynamic skiascopy" to determine the wavefront aberrations of the eye. The fundamental differences between retinoscopy and dynamic skiascopy include the use of infrared light instead of visible light and the measurement of time lag for photodetector simulation instead of lenses to determine the refractive power of 1440 data points within the physiologically dilated pupil rather than just the refraction of the visual axis. The raw data is plotted refractive power maps and also converted to conventional wavefront maps and graphs.