Optical property

The lenticules were placed in glycerol (Invitrogen) for 2 hours to reduce non-specific tissue swelling prior to optical evaluations²¹. The spectral transmittance of lenticules was determined using INFINITE 200 UV-Vis spectrophotometer (Tecan) with light wavelength ranged from 380 to 780 nm. Lenticules were placed on polystyrene coverslips (Thermanox, Nunc, 13 mm in diameter, 0.2 mm thick) and inserted into the spectrophotometer chamber for transmittance measurement. Data were collected at 10 nm wavelength increments. The transmittance coefficient (Ct) was calculated as C_t = I_t/I₀, where (I_t was the transmitted light intensity and I₀ was the incident light intensity)³¹. Experiments were triplicated and C_t of samples was normalized with the corresponding C_t of polystyrene coverslip and the mean percentage of transmittance to the control lenticule group was calculated.