Figure 7 of Gilliland, Mol Vis 2008; 14:572-582.


Figure 7. Light scattering by MLBs. In the Indian cataract with the highest density of MLBs, 1,000,000 µm3 of tissue was examined by laser scanning confocal microscopy, and in that volume, 412 MLBs were observed. Therefore, the frequency of MLBs was 405,963 per mm3 – approximately 100 times that of United States cataracts analyzed in previous studies [32,33]. Mie scattering theory predicts that MLBs contribute significantly to forward scattering despite the fact that they occupy only 0.2% of the volume of the nucleus of the lens. In this case, the lens is almost completely opaque with 99.8% scattering (white asterisk, representing 1.49 refractive index and 2.1 µm average diameter) for 550 nm wavelength light and variable internal refractive index as seen in the surface plot of scattering percent.