Woman's Eyeball Looks Like Sliced Pizza: Here's Why [PHOTO]

A woman's strange-looking eyes that resembled sliced pizza baffled doctors and scientists alike, but experts have now found the reason behind her medical condition.

While some might think this could have been the result of a new eyeball tattoo, an eye surgery that is not practiced anymore was actually the one responsible for the woman's eyes having what appears to be several thin lines arranged to form a radial pattern.

See a close-up image of her eerie eyes here.

Doctors first observed the strange incisions in the 41-year-old woman's eyes when she came in for an exam. According to the report published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the patient in question complained that her eyesight had gradually worsened over the course of 20 years.

An examination of her eyes showed that her corneas — the clear, dome-shaped surface that covers the front of the eyeball — each had 16 incisions arranged in a radial pattern. These incisions are known to be the result of eye surgery called radial keratotomy, a procedure which the patient confirmed she'd undergone 23 years prior to the exam, according to the report, led by Dr. Muralidhar Ramappa of LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, India.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, radial keratotomy had been a popular eye surgery for treating nearsightedness (myopia). However, it was later replaced with the more efficient laser eye surgery.

And it seems the resemblance to pizza isn't completely as the cornea was cut exactly like one for the procedure. Dr. Michael Nejat, an ophthalmologist at Staten Island University Hospital in New York who was not involved in the case, explained to Live Science that surgeons used a blade to make radial "slices" in the cornea, therefore making it flat. This would then allow patients with nearsightedness to see better without the use of glasses.

The eye doesn't actually look like a sliced tomato pizza though despite what the image may lead you to believe. The redness of the patient's pupil is apparently just the result of the red-eye effect, which happens when light bounces off the back of eye. According to Nejat, the image was probably taken this way to emphasize the radial incisions.

As for why radial keratotomy isn't practiced anymore, Nejat explained that the procedure has several possible complications. According to the report, the sharpness of a person's vision may be reduced if surgeons accidentally make overlapping incisions or cut too close to the center of the eye. Patients may also end up seeing glare and halos around objects if their corneas have scars.

And while the surgery does improve nearsightedness initially, it also has a long-term complication that may be just as bad. The cornea apparently continues to flatten over time, and this results in overcorrected vision. This is what happened to the 41-year-old woman in the report as she now suffers from farsightedness.

For treatment, the patient was given a new prescription for corrective lenses. The report confirmed that her vision had not worsened six months later.