Patent ID: 8920690

Claim:
A method for modifying an optical property of a lens sized for placement in a human eye comprising the steps of: a) holding the lens external to an eye, the lens having an anterior surface, a posterior surface and an optical axis, and formed of an optical material having a first refractive index; and b) forming a contiguous three-dimensional patterned microstructure within a layer of the lens by modifying a plurality of contiguous loci in the layer by optically distributing a focused pulsed laser beam on each locus of said plurality of contiguous loci, causing a nonlinear absorption of photons by the optical material of each modified locus resulting in the optical material of the modified loci having a second refractive index that is different than the optical material before modification; wherein the contiguous three-dimensional patterned microstructure comprises a phase shifting optical structure that modifies the optical property of the lens, said phase shifting optical structure comprising a plurality of full-wave, phase-wrapped zones that compensate for optical path length differences within an array of neighboring light rays.