This piece of machinery is state of the art equipment when it comes to measuring your eyes. We were one of the very first optical practices in Northern Ireland to offer this technology and have built up years of experience. Only a couple of other practices in Northern Ireland own an i.Profiler®.

Most of us know whether we are far- or near sighted or suffer from astigmatism. But there is also something called "higher order aberrations" – complex refractive errors that are unique to each human eye. Conventional refraction – the eye test where you keep choosing ‘1 or 2’ – cannot reveal these errors. Using the i.Profiler® and the data it generates for your eyes, is like being measured up for a tailor made suit at Saville’s Row: your spectacle lenses will be as unique as your eyes.

The i.Profiler® is a wavefront aberometer which not only assesses the short or long-sightedness and astigmatism present (known as low order aberations) but also measures high order aberations.

The higher order aberations are a much larger group of aberations creating vision blur. Although not as significant, in 35% of the population they can be problematic enough to still leave vision slightly blurred even on correction of short sightedness/long sightedness and for astigmatism. This is a very common reason why some people do not see as clearly in low light, for instance when you are driving at night.

With the data from the i.Profiler® we can order truly customised precision lenses from Carl Zeiss Vision that will provide you with clear night and twilight vision without irritating reflections or halo effects. You will enjoy excellent contrast and depth of field. Last but not least, you will simply see more clearly and colours will suddenly seem richer.

No face is symmetrical, and no two people's eyes are the same distance apart. Only after the spectacle frames have been precisely adjusted to the individual wearer can spectacle lenses perform to their full potential.

We give the same attention to detail when making up glasses as we do when examining your eyes. It is very important that lenses are pointed accurately in front of your eyes and this is especially so with Zeiss progressive lenses. For progressive lenses all three vision zones (distance, intermediate and near) have to be optimally adjusted.

To optimise the visual performance of lenses we use an iTerminal to measure precisely to 0.1mm where the lenses should be positioned in the frame to optimise the visual performance. Many varifocal wearers in particular suffer from poorer quality of vision - or even non-tolerance – due to poorly made up glasses. Only after the spectacle frames have been precisely adjusted to the individual wearer can spectacle lenses perform to their full potential.

In the past, opticians did the measurements for the centration of spectacle lenses manually. The spectacles wearer looked through the selected spectacle frames and the optician used a felt pen on the spectacle lens to mark where the pupils were and the distance between the eyes. The i.Terminal®2 from ZEISS provides an objective image of the spectacles wearer with the frames.

Once you have chosen your frame, our optometrist will attach measuring equipment to the frame which you will then have to wear. He will ask you to stand perfectly still and stare into the distance. Once the correct measurements have been taken, these are added to your other information to be made into the perfect pair of glasses.

Only a few years ago an OCT (ocular coherence tomographer) was reserved for specialist eye departments in hospitals. We are delighted to be able to offer this incredible technology to our patients so we can scan your eyes in 3D and analyse your retinal structure.

OCT is a bit like an ultrasound or an MRI scan, but it uses reflections of light instead of sound or radio waves. It allows us to look much more closely at various key structures within the retina (the photosensitive layer within the eye onto which your eye and/or glasses focus the picture of whatever you are looking at).

We can also have a look at individual layers in cross section. This is extremely useful in assessing changes to the macula (the ‘sweet spot’ at the back of the eye that we see best with). Age related macular degeneration (AMD) is the major cause of blindness in the Western world.

Other diseases we can monitor with our Zeiss OCT scanner:

• Diabetic Retinopathy
• Glaucoma
• Diseases of the optic nerve such as optic neuritis and raised intracranial pressure

The Zeiss OCT scan is quick and painless.