An ophthalmic laser surgical system includes a pulsed laser source configured to generate a pulsed laser beam, optics configured to direct the laser beam towards a target region in a lens of an eye, and a processor configured to control the optics to form a regular array of cells in the target region by creating layers of photodisrupted bubbles to generate cell boundaries. The layers are created by causing the optics to scan the pulsed laser according to a curvature of a focal plane of the optics to track a natural curvature of the lens.
