This book provides a faithful and robust simulation of the optical and visual performances of the human eye for axial vision of distant objects in a variety of visual conditions. The author moves from intrinsically theoretical aspects (the optical and neurophysical models of the eye) to include a great number of experimental measurements from the scientific literature, in order to adapt the model parameters to the observed phenomenology and validate the predictivity power of the models themselves. The results are very satisfactory in terms of quantitative and qualitative adherence of model predictions to field measurements.

Resulting from the author's investigations over the last decade, the book material is largely original, and the most relevant achievement can be found in the capacity to evaluate visual acuity for a range of visual conditions, such as variations in pupil size, refractive error, and ambient illumination.

Thanks to the general organization of the book, chapters and paragraphs with high level mathematical and physical optics content can be safely skipped without compromising the overall comprehension. To this end, a brief summary is provided at the end of each chapter, making this book appropriate for readers with greatly varying degrees of technical knowledge.