During my corneal fellowship at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital, I was given the opportunity to work on techniques for lamellar keratoplasty. I am greatly indebted to the other corneal surgeons at our clinic, Houdijn Beekhuis, Lies Remeijer, and Annette Geerards, as well as the entire medical staff.

I would like to use this opportunity to sincerely thank Ger Vijfvinkel, president of D.O.R.C. International, for his continuous support throughout the study and his willingness to produce the neccessary instruments for this surgical technique. I also thank his employes, in particular Frank Lander, the instrumentmaker who manufactured the instruments.

Fred Eggink and Carla Nieuwendaal, thank you for your enthousiasm over the years, for helping me out with the animal experiments, and gathering the clinical data on the contact lenses. I thank Bart van Dooren for processing the specular microscopy and videotopography data.

I thank BIS/Eurotransplant and the Dutch Eye Bank at the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam for their continuous cooperation with the ongoing projects,

These project were sponsored by the "Rotterdamse Vereniging Blindenbelangen" and "the STW, applied science division of the Ministry of Economic Affairs".