Keynote speaker: D. Robert Iskander, "Parsimonious modelling of corneal surfaces"

Abstract: Cornea is the major refracting component of the eye and contributes to about two thirds of the total optical (refractive) power of the eye, while the rest is provided by the lens. Cornea has to be aspheric to minimise the effect of spherical aberration. Knowledge of the corneal curvature is important for determining eye’s aberration, contact lens design, detecting/diagnosing corneal anomalies (e.g., keratoconus), and performing refractive surgery. Corneal surfaces can be measured using keratography, Scheimpflug imaging, and optical coherence tomography, to mention a few. Fitting data from such instruments with a functional parametric model leads to a more compact representation than the set of the sample points itself. In turn, such a representation is more suitable for cross-sectional analysis of corneal topography, longitudinal studies of corneal changes and studies of corneal response to accommodation, corneal classification, keratoconus detection, and even data compression.  The talk will cover past and present attempts to model corneal surfaces. Procedures that determine a class of functions that would parsimoniously describe corneal curvature are discussed in terms of model and model order selection.

Short Vitae: D. Robert Iskander received the Ph.D. degree in signal processing from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Qld., Australia, in 1997, and the D. Sc. degree in biocybernetics and biomedical engineering from the Silesian Technical University, Gliwice, Poland, in 2010. From 1996 to 2000, he was a Research Fellow at the Signal Processing Research Centre and the Centre for Eye Research, QUT. He joined the School of Engineering, Griffith University, as a Senior Lecturer and the Head of the Signal Processing Group in 2001. From 2003 to 2009, he was the Principal Research Fellow at the School of Optometry, QUT, Kelvin Grove, Australia, where he lead the Signal and Image Processing Group within the Contact Lens and Visual Optics Laboratory. From 2010, he has been with the Institute of Physics, Wroclaw University of Technology (WUT), Poland, as a visiting academy. From 2011, he joined the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Instrumentation (WUT).  He is the author/co-author of more than 60 journal papers and over 80 conference publications. He is the holder of eight international patents. His current research interests include statistical signal and image processing and visual optics. Dr. Iskander is a senior member of IEEE, member of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology and the American Optical Society.