Basic Principles –

The Human Eye

• Light enters the eye through the
pupil and an image is projected
on the retina.
• Muscles move the eyeball in the
orbits and allow you to focus the
image on the central retina or
fovea.

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Parts of eye
 Eye - Pupil
• The pupil is a hole located in the center of the iris of the
eye that allows light to strike the retina.
• Contraction and dilation of pupil changes the size to allow
low and bright light.
• If low light – Size of pupil is big.
• If bright light – size of pupil is small.
 Eye - Iris
• Iris is named for various flower like colours consists of
thin circular curtain and dialator sphincter papillae
muscles.
• Expansion and contraction of these muscles make the
pupil’s size. This function is comparable to the diaphragm
of a camera.
 Cornea
• The cornea is the transparent front part of the eye that
covers the iris, pupil.
• The cornea accounting for approximately two-thirds of
the eye's total optical power. In humans, the refractive
power of the cornea is approximately 43 diopters.
 Lens
• The lens is a transparent, biconvex structure in the eye that,
along with the cornea, helps to refract light to be focused on
the retina.
• The lens, by changing shape, functions to change the focal
distance of the eye so that it can focus on objects at various
distances, thus allowing a sharp real image of the object of
interest to be formed on the retina. This adjustment of the
lens is known as accommodation.
• Accommodation is similar to the focusing of a photographic
camera via movement of its lenses.
Lens
 Retina
• The retina is the innermost, light-sensitive layer, or
"coat", of shell tissue of the eye.
• The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional
image of the visual world on the retina, which translates
that image into electrical neural impulses to the brain to
create visual perception, the retina serving much the
same function as film or a CCD in a camera.
 Retina
• The retina consists of several layers of neurons.
• The only neural cells that are directly sensitive to light are
the photoreceptor cells, which are of two types: rods and
cones. Rods function mainly in dim light and provide
black-and-white vision while cones are responsible for the
perception of color.
 Basic Principles – The Human Eye

The retina is a mosaic of two basic types of photoreceptors, rods and cones.
• Rods are sensitive to blue-green light and are used for vision under dark or dim
conditions.
• Cones operate only in relatively bright light, but they provide us with our
sharpest images and enable us to see colors. There are three types of cones
– L-cones are red absorbing cones or those that absorb best at the relatively
long wavelengths peaking at 565 nm
– M-cones are green absorbing cones with a peak absorption at 535 nm
– S-cones are blue absorbing cones with a peak absorption at 440 nm. 16
 Basic Principles – Visual Acuity
• Cones provide us with our sharpest
images because most of the 3 million
cones in each retina are confined to a
small region just opposite the lens called
the fovea. The maximum concentration
is about 180,000 cones per square mm.
• Our sharpest and most colorful images
are produced in the fovea.
• Outside of this region our vision is
relatively poor but, since we can quickly
redirect our eyes we tend not to be
aware of our poor peripheral vision.
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Cone Details

Current understanding is that the 6 to 7 million cones can be divided into "red” cones
(64%), "green" cones (32%), and "blue" cones (2%) based on measured response
curves.

They provide the eye's color sensitivity. The green and red cones are concentrated in
the fovea centralis . The "blue” cones have the highest sensitivity and are mostly
found outside the fovea leading to some distinctions in the eye's blue perception

The cones are less sensitive to light than the rods, as shown a typical day night
comparison. The daylight vision (cone vision) adapts much more rapidly to changing
light levels, adjusting to a change like coming indoors out of
sunlight in a few seconds.
Rod Details

The rods are the most numerous of the photoreceptors, some 120 million, and are
the more sensitive than the cones. However, they are not sensitive to color.

They are responsible for our dark-adapted, or scotopic, vision. The rods are incredibly
efficient photoreceptors. More than one thousand times as sensitive as the cones,
they can reportedly be triggered by individual photons under optimal conditions.

The optimum dark-adapted vision is obtained only after a considerable period of

darkness, say 30 minutes or longer, because the rod adaption process is much slower
than that of the cones.
 How Eye functions?
• Light passes through the transparent cornea and enters
the inner part of the eye through the pupil.
• The size of the pupil and thus the amount of light
entering the eye is controlled by the iris.
• The lens focuses light rays from an object onto the retina,
at the rear of the eyeball.
• The light rays are then converted from light energy to
electrical signals by groups of receptor cells called rods
and Cones.
 How Eye functions?
• Rods are not color sensitive but detect the intensity of the
light and can respond at very low levels,
• whereas cones are sensitive to different colors,
responding according to the color’s specific wavelength,
but need a much higher intensity of light to respond.
• These signals are passed along the optic nerve to the
brain which then processes the information and forms the
picture we see.
• To enable the picture to be formed and identified, the
brain requires process data, which is gained by training
and experience.
 Photopic vision
• Around the mid region of retina, around the fovea
centralis, most cone receptors present.
• Cone receptors exist graduating outwards concentrically
cones mix with rods until virtually all rods are present.
• Cones are acutely sensitive to light perceiving colour
images.
• This Day light vision is called photopic or foveal vision.
• CONES ARE ACTIVE AT LIGHT INTENSITIES > 3 Cd/Sq.m
 Scotopic vision
• Scotopic vision [para foveal] utilizes the outer
periphery of retina which is dominated by rods.
• Accommodation by the retraction of the iris thus dilating
the pupil allowing more light in to the eye.
• Scotopic vision lacks the perception of colour due to
cones not being sensitive under low light intensities.
• The rod aided by photo sensitive pigment called opsin
and retinene which enhances rod sensitivity to low light
intensities.
• Rods are active at low illuminations of less than 3x10-5cd/Sq.m
 Basic Principles – Light Levels
• Under normal lighting conditions the cones are
operating and the eye has good visual acuity and
is most sensitive to greenish yellow color, which
has a wavelength around 555 nanometers
(photopic curve).
• When the light levels drop to near total darkness,
the response of the eye changes significantly as
shown by the scotopic response curve on the left.
• At this level of light, the rods are most active and
the human eye is more sensitive to any amount of
light that is present, but is less sensitive to the
range of color.
• At this very low light level, sensitivity to blue,
violet, and ultraviolet is increased, but sensitivity
to yellow and red is reduced.

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 Keywords:

Cones are responsible for color perceptions and details

Rods are responsible for night vision, our most sensitive motion
detection, and our peripheral vision.

Rods is one thousandth times more efficient photoreceptors than

cones

Rods are efficient motion sensors

Rod adaptation is much slower than cones

Night vision is best at peripheral vision (not viewing the object right
at the center of field of vision)
 Errors of refraction
1. Myopia: near sightedness
definite far point
Correction- concave lens
2. Hypermetropia: far sightedness
uses accommodation
Correction- convex lens
3. Emmetropia: sharp normal vision
 Errors of refraction
Myopia: near sightedness.
(close objects are clear, and distant objects are blurry)
• Myopia is usually inherited and often discovered in
childhood. Myopia often progresses throughout the
teenage years when the body is growing rapidly.
• Correction- concave lens
Near-Sighted (Myopia)
 Errors of refraction
Hypermetropia: far sightedness.
• (close objects are more blurry than distant objects)
Hypermetropia can also be inherited.
• Children often have hypermetropia, which may lessen in
adulthood. In mild hypermetropia, distance vision is clear
while near vision is blurry.
• Correction- convex lens.
Far-Sighted (Hypermetropia)
Presbyopia
 Presbyopia
• With age, lens becomes less elastic
• Accommodation power becomes +2D at
50 yrs and 0D at 70yrs of age
• Person needs bifocal lens
 Visual acuity
• Visual acuity is the ability of the eye to resolve fine details.
• VISUS 1: Ability of the eye to resolve details separated by a
distance of 1 minute of arc.
 Visual acuity
• Visual acuity is the ability of the eye to resolve fine details.
• VISUS 1: Ability of the eye to resolve details separated by a distance of 1 minute of arc.
• REQUIREMENTS FOR NDT INSPECTOR – VISUAL ACUITY
 Basic Principles – Vision
• When evaluations are made by an inspector, eye
examinations must be done at regular intervals to
assure accuracy and sensitivity. These examinations
may consist
of the following:
• Near Vision (Jaeger)
• Far Vision (Snellen)
• Color Differentiation
• When using machine vision, different but similar
performance checks must be performed.

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 Accommodation and adaptation

• Accommodation - ability to focus at different

distance object.
• Adaptation - dark adaptation, ability of eye to
overcome 2 different intensities of light.
 Vision Acuity
• For the average Eye, the maximum resolvable angular
separation of 2 points on an object is about 1 minute of
an arc [1/60th of a degree].
• This implies that at distance of 300 mm from test surface,
the best resolution to be expected is about 0.09 mm.
• At 500 mm, the best resolution to be expected is about
0.18 mm.
 Introduction to Colour-blindness

• Inability to perceive colors

– Total color blindness is rare
• Color Weakness: Inability to distinguish some colors
– Red-green is most common; much more common
among men than women
– Recessive, sex-linked trait on X chromosome
• Ishihara Test: Test for color blindness and color weakness
 What's it Like Being Colour-blind?

Most color-blind people see normally in all

other aspects other than the color of their
weakened cone.

Color-blind people can usually learn by Weak green cone

experience to associate certain colors with
different sensations of brightness.

Many victims of the defect are unaware that

they are color-blind.
Weak red cone