Ray Tracing LASIK Brisbane

Your initial optometrist assessment is free. Every patient proceeding to surgery has a paid specialist surgeon consultation to confirm suitability, discuss their specific procedure and arrange surgery. The consultation fee is deducted from the surgery price for every procedure if you proceed. Prescribed medications and eye drops are purchased separately; eligible patients can access PBS subsidies for eligible prescriptions. See our pricing details.

Ray Tracing LASIK is the most personalised form of LASIK available. Instead of planning your treatment from your glasses prescription alone, the system builds a 3D digital model of your individual eye — including the front and back surfaces of the cornea, the natural lens, and the length of the eye — then traces thousands of simulated light rays through that model to calculate a laser profile unique to your optical system. Focus Vision is the only clinic in Queensland offering Ray Tracing LASIK.

Yes. WaveLight Plus is the commercial name of the Alcon platform that delivers ray-tracing-guided LASIK (you may also see the name InnovEyes, which refers to the 3D eye-modelling technology behind it). If you have been researching 'WaveLight Plus LASIK' or 'InnovEyes' and want the treatment in Queensland, Focus Vision in Brisbane is currently the only clinic where it is available.

Standard LASIK corrects the prescription measured at your glasses test, applied to measurements of the front of your cornea. Ray Tracing LASIK goes further: it measures your entire optical system — front and back corneal surfaces, the crystalline lens and the eye's length — and simulates how light actually travels through your eye before a single laser pulse is planned. The result is a fully individualised treatment rather than one based on population averages, giving greater precision and more predictable outcomes.

Wavefront-guided LASIK measures how light exits the eye as a whole, and topography-guided LASIK maps the front surface of the cornea — each captures one piece of the puzzle. Ray tracing combines all of the eye's optical data in a single 3D model and then simulates vision through the planned correction before treatment. It is the first technology that plans LASIK on a complete, individual model of the eye rather than on one isolated measurement.

This is one of its key strengths. Halos, starbursts and glare at night are usually caused by higher-order aberrations — microscopic optical imperfections that glasses cannot correct. Because ray tracing plans the treatment around your eye's individual aberration profile, it aims to avoid adding to these imperfections. No laser treatment can promise perfect night vision: some people notice halos or glare, especially in the first months. In a 2026 study of 300 patients treated on the same Alcon WaveLight EX500 laser, 3% or fewer found glare, halos or starbursts very or extremely bothersome a year after LASIK, but only 54% had no difficulty at all driving at night (Lobanoff et al., 2026). See dry eye, glare and halos after LASIK for more.

At Focus Vision, LASIK costs $4,250 per eye, all-inclusive — and ray tracing treatment is included at no extra charge for suitable candidates. The price covers all pre-operative assessments, the procedure, and a full year of aftercare appointments, with 24-month interest-free payment plans from around $41 per week. See our Costs page for the full breakdown. The paid specialist surgeon consultation fee is deducted from the surgery price if you proceed. Prescribed medications and eye drops are purchased separately. If your vision needs fine-tuning afterwards, enhancements are free for two years under our enhancement policy.

The baseline requirements are the same as for LASIK: over 18, a prescription that has been stable for at least 12 months, healthy corneas of adequate thickness, and no active eye disease. Ray tracing is particularly valuable if you have astigmatism, larger pupils, a higher prescription, or you drive a lot at night. If your corneas are too thin for LASIK, TransPRK or ICL surgery may suit you better. Start with our free online suitability test or book a free optometrist assessment in Woolloongabba.

From your point of view, no. The extra work happens before surgery, when the 3D scan of your eye is captured and the individualised profile is calculated. On the day, treatment proceeds exactly like modern LASIK: anaesthetic drops, a femtosecond laser flap, and the excimer laser reshaping — around 10 minutes for both eyes, with no sharp pain.

Recovery is the same as standard LASIK. Most patients notice a dramatic improvement within 24 hours and return to work in one to two days. Your eyes may feel gritty or watery for a few hours after surgery, and temporary dryness in the first weeks is normal and managed with drops.

Ray-tracing LASIK has been evaluated in peer-reviewed research. In an international multicentre study of ray-tracing LASIK on the Alcon WaveLight Plus platform, published in 2024 by Kanellopoulos, Australian ophthalmologist Dr Chandra Bala and colleagues, 113 patients (225 eyes) with short-sightedness and astigmatism were treated. The authors concluded that the treatment appeared safe and effective, and 97% of patients (103 of 106) were completely or very satisfied with their vision (Kanellopoulos et al., Clin Ophthalmol 2024). Three of the authors are affiliated with Alcon, which makes the platform. At Focus Vision every procedure is performed by an internationally fellowship-trained corneal subspecialist inside the South Brisbane Day Hospital — a fully accredited private day hospital — and our surgeons continuously audit their refractive outcomes.

Focus Vision was the first clinic in Queensland to invest in the WaveLight Plus ray-tracing platform, and it remains exclusive to our Brisbane laser suite. Our co-founders, Dr Brendan Cronin and Dr David Gunn, are corneal subspecialists with a strong focus on adopting new technology only where the evidence supports it, and auditing their own outcomes.

Yes — astigmatism is where the personalised approach shines. Because the treatment is planned on a 3D model of your actual cornea rather than an averaged shape, ray tracing corrects both regular astigmatism and the subtle irregularities that standard treatments can leave behind. If you have been told your astigmatism makes you a borderline candidate elsewhere, it is worth a free optometrist assessment with our team.