Wavelight Oculus Pentacam

The pentacam is a new electronic device that can view the front of the eye with a camera without making contact with the eye. This device moves externally around the eye and measures the following clinical parameters:

• Anterior corneal topography
• Anterior elevation
• Posterior elevation
• Sagittal and tangential analysis of the cornea
• Cornea thickness
• Anterior chamber depth
• Irido-corneal angle

The Pentacam allows the following clinical applications:

• Exclude patients with clinical keratoconus
• Exclude patients with mild or fruste keratoconus
• Ablation profile calculation for LASIK
• Calculation of the intraocular lens for cataracts
• Applying the Topoguided Ablation technique for the treatment of patients with a small optical zone, decentered ablation, irregular astigmatism resulting from previous and old refractive surgery techniques (radial keratotomy, Laser Excimer without eye tracker...).
  

Pentacam

The pentacam is a rotating Scheimpflug camera system that makes images of the anterior segment of the eye. The Scheimpflug technique makes sharp and clear images that contain information from the anterior surface of the cornea to the posterior surface of the lens.

The great advantage of making these rotating images is that we can get extremely precise measurements of the central cornea, we can compensate for eye movements, it is easy for the patient to fixate on the point, and the recording time is extraordinarily short.

The pentacam calculates a three-dimensional model of the anterior segment and provides the following information:

• anterior and posterior corneal topography and elevation mapping
• corneal pachymetry from limbus to limbus
• 3D chamber analysis, depth and volume
• lens densitometry
• Belin keratoconus screening
• IOL calcuation after refractive surgery following Holladay
• simulation of phakic IOL in the anterior eye chamber

Example

What is corneal topography/corneal tomography?

The cornea is the foremost clear part of the eye. The structure of the eye looks like this:

Topography is an imaging technique that creates an image of the corneal surface (like a landscape map that includes hills, mountains, waves on the water and so forth). Tomography provides a representation of the cornea by creating a cross section of the anterior part of the eye. The form of the cornea is measure precisely during the measuring with a corneal topogragh. The device measures the curvature of the cornea at more than 2000 points. You will not feel anything during this examination.

Corneal tomography

With the assistance of the Pentacam, a corneal tomography makes a cross section of the different layers of the cornea. In this way it is possible to collect much more information about the refractive power of the cornea. The refractive power of the front and back surface of the cornea can be measured at each spot on the cornea. Additionally, there are various calculations possible that reveal whether the cornea is normal or abnormal.

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