1. A custom system for efficiently reducing optical distortion in a particular helmet-mounted display comprising: an optical element comprising a first curved optical surface, which surface is associated with optical element distortion; said first curved optical surface being logically subdivided into a plurality of smaller curved optical surface segments, each segment associated with a segment distortion; wherein said optical element distortion can be characterized across the optical element with an optical element polynomial; wherein at least one of said segment distortions of said plurality of smaller curved optical surface segments, can be characterized with a segment polynomial which is a lower order polynomial than said optical element polynomial; a computer processor configured to apply distortion correction to each of said smaller curved optical segments based upon the segment polynomial associated with said smaller curved optical segments; and said computer processor further configured to combine data associated with each smaller curved optical segment to collectively improve image quality of images associated with said first curved optical surface.