Deviations of Lambert-Beer's law affect corneal refractive parameters after refractive surgery.

We calculate whether deviations of Lambert-Beer's law, which regulates depth ablation during corneal ablation, significantly influence corneal refractive parameters after refractive surgery and whether they influence visual performance. For this, we compute a point-to-point correction on the cornea while assuming a non-linear (including a quadratic term) fit for depth ablation. Post-surgical equations for refractive parameters using a non-linear fit show significant differences with respect to parameters obtained from a linear fit (Lambert-Beer's law). Differences were also significant for corneal aberrations. These results show that corneal-ablation algorithms should include analytical information on deviations from Lambert-Beer's law for achieving an accurate eye correction.