A leading-edge topographer is critical to monitor how the cornea (the clear window of the eye) changes over time. Medmont is hailed as the leading manufacturer of topographers, with the model “E300” being the gold standard topographer for over a decade. Their newest topographer, the Meridia, improves upon the original E300 model by more accurately capturing your cornea in three dimensions. Increased topographical accuracy is important to be able to track how your cornea changes from year to year.

Medmont partnered with Lumen Optometric to help launch the new gold standard and we’re proud to be able to offer this latest form of technology to our patients.

Scleral lenses rest on the area outside of the cornea, the white tissue known as the sclera. Scleral topographers such as the sMap3D can measure 22mm of the frontal surface of the eye, whereas most corneal topographers are limited to the first 9-12mm. This instrument is unique in that it utilizes dual-cameras that can image the eye in three distinct gazes: straight, upward, and downward. With these three gazes of view, six 3D maps are created and then algorithmically stitched together to create an entire 3D model of your eye. All the shape parameters of your lens are crafted from these composite scans, which leads to a better-fitting, healthier lens. This technology is the cornerstone of the generation 2 scleral lenses.

This instrument has since been replaced with the Pentacam AXL Wave.

The Pentacam AXL Wave is the cutting-edge corneal tomography and scleral profilometer instrument on the market. This instrument utilizes a rotating Scheimpflug camera to capture up to fifty slices of the front and back of the cornea (this is the tomography element), reconstructing an accurate 3D model of both surfaces of the cornea. The AXL Wave model utilizes the most up-to-date camera sensor ever used in a Pentacam to capture all 360 degrees of your sclera (this is the profilometry element).

Fun fact: As of 2023, there are less than ten optometrists in the United States that utilize this level of technology in their office.

The Ovitz Xwave is the world’s first closed-loop, wavefront-guided scleral lens production system. Let’s break down what that means. It’s a closed-loop system because it directly integrates the shape data from the sMap3D or the Pentacam AXL Wave with the entire visual system data from the Xwave’s scans. Wavefront-guided refers to the ability of the Xwave to determine the quantity and quality of inherent distortion in one’s vision. With this data, the optical engineers from Ovitz can then add additional correction that reduces the distortion.

The difference between the Xwave and other aberrometers is that it can determine the total amount of distortion present in the entire visual system. This is a more difficult task as it requires the instrument to summate the distortion through a scleral lens. The correction of this distortion, technically called higher-order aberrations, is what makes this third-generation scleral special. It’s most beneficial to the patients that still have residual blur/glare/smearing from their glasses, soft/rigid contacts, or older-generation scleral lenses.