Handbook of Visual Optics, Volume One: Fundamentals and Eye Optics

This new edition of the Handbook of Visual Optics, Volume One, provides an authoritative and up-to-date overview of physiological optics. It spans the field from the physical foundations of light propagation in the eye to the biological and perceptual mechanisms underlying human vision. Building on the success of the first edition, this volume has been updated and expanded to reflect major advances in understanding the optical properties of the eye, visual performance, and fundamental measurement methods.
Integrating perspectives from physics, biology, medicine, psychology, and engineering, the chapters cover the geometry and wave optics of the eye, its anatomy and function, the behavior of optical aberrations and scattering, and the neural processes that shape perception. This first volume establishes the essential basis for the companion Volume Two, which addresses ophthalmic instrumentation and applications.

Key Features:

• Comprehensive coverage of the fundamentals of visual optics, from geometrical and wave optics to the anatomy, physiology, and visual psychophysics of the human eye.
• Extensive updates reflecting the past decade of progress, including new chapters on chromatic aberration, peripheral optics, and recent advances in adaptive optics and visual modeling.
• Authored by leading international experts, offering an integrated multidisciplinary perspective that connects optical theory, biological structure, and visual perception.

Pablo Artal is Full Professor of Optics at the University of Murcia (Spain), where he founded and directs the Laboratorio de Óptica. He received his PhD in Physics from the University Complutense of Madrid and carried out postdoctoral research at the Institut d’Optique, Université de Paris-Sud (Orsay, France) and Cambridge University. Before joining the University of Murcia in 1994, he was Senior Research Scientist at the Instituto de Óptica, CSIC (Madrid, Spain). He has also been Visiting Professor at the University of Rochester, Rochester NY, and the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, and is currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at Central South University, Changsha, China.

Professor Artal’s research focuses on the optics of the eye and retina, visual performance, and the development of advanced optical and electronic imaging technologies for vision science, ophthalmology, and biomedicine. He has pioneered highly innovative methods for studying the eye’s optics and has contributed fundamentally to understanding the optical and neural factors limiting human vision. Several of his inventions have been translated into clinical ophthalmic instruments now in widespread use. He has authored over 450 peer-reviewed papers, which have received more than 28,000 citations (h-index = 90, Google Scholar), delivered over 200 invited lectures and 150 institutional seminars, and supervised more than 45 PhD theses and 25 postdoctoral fellows.

He is co-inventor on 30 international patents and cofounder of four technology companies, including Visiometrics SL and Voptica SL, which have commercialized innovative diagnostic and visual simulation devices. Professor Artal is a Fellow of OPTICA (OSA), ARVO, SPIE, and the European Optical Society. His contributions have been recognized with numerous national and international awards, including the Edwin H. Land Medal (OSA/IS&T, 2013), the King Jaime I Award in New Technologies (2015), the National Spanish Research Award “Juan de la Cierva” (2018), the Edgar D. Tillyer Award (OSA, 2019), and the Medal of the Spanish Royal Physics Society (2021). He has also received two European Research Council (ERC) grants: an Advanced Grant in 2014 and a Proof-of-Concept Grant in 2020.