Method and Apparatus for Creating Ocular Surgical and Relaxing Incisions

A cataract surgery scanning system for treating target tissue in one or more of a cornea, limbus or sclera of a patient's eye, comprising:

• a wavefront sensor for measuring aberrations of the patient's eye;
• a treatment light source for generating a treatment light beam;
• a scanner for deflecting the light beam to form first and second treatment patterns of the treatment light beam under the control of a controller;
• and
• a delivery system comprising the controller operatively coupled to the wavefront sensor, the treatment light source, and the scanner, and programmed to:
• (i) based on the aberrations measured by the wavefront sensor, configure the second treatment pattern for a relaxation incision to at least partially correct the measured aberrations;
• (ii) deliver the first treatment pattern to a first target tissue selected from the group consisting of the cornea, limbus and sclera of the patient's eye to form a cataract incision therein that provides access to an eye chamber of the patient's eye, the incision to be formed by delivering the first treatment pattern only partially extending through the target tissue, and
• (iii) deliver the second treatment pattern to a second target tissue to form the relaxation incision along or near limbus tissue, or along corneal tissue-of the patient's eye.

A method for treating target tissue in a patient's eye, comprising:

• by an ultrafast laser source, generating a laser beam having a plurality of laser pulses;
• measuring an optical aberration of the eye;
• by an Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) device, generating signals representing an image of a cornea and limbus of the eye;
• by a controller, determining a treatment pattern based upon the signals from the OCT device and the measured optical aberration of the eye, the treatment pattern including a cataract incision and one or more limbal relaxation incisions, wherein:
• when the eye has with-the-rule astigmatism or oblique astigmatism, the limbal relaxation incision is located temporally and at a steep axis;
• when the eye has asymmetric astigmatism, one limbal relaxation incision in a steeper one of two steep axes is elongated and another limbal relaxation incision in a flatter of the two steep axes is shortened by a same amount;
• when the eye has against-the-rule astigmatism below 1.5 D, the treatment pattern includes a single limbal relaxation incision in a steep meridian located opposite to the cataract incision;
• when the eye has astigmatism greater than 1.5 D, the treatment pattern includes a pair of limbal relaxation incisions;
• and when the eye has against-the-rule astigmatism, the treatment pattern includes one pair of limbal relaxation incisions;
• and
• by a scanner under control of the controller, scanning a focal point of the laser beam according to the treatment pattern to form the cataract incision in the cornea that provides access for lens removal instrumentation to a crystalline lens of the patient's eye and the one or more limbal relaxation incisions in the limbus.