Researchers led by Eric Tremblay of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EDFL) and Joseph Ford of the University of California, San Diego have developed a new superhuman contact lens that, when worn with modified 3D glasses, changes the wearer’s vision. 2.8x magnification glasses.
This exposure may one day empower people with macular degeneration and even the eyes of people with perfectly healthy vision.
Telescopic Contact Lens
How do they work?The center of the lens allows light to pass directly through for normal vision.Meanwhile, a 1.17mm-thick magnifying ring, located around the center of the lens, consisting of tiny aluminum mirrors, reflects incoming light from the object to the wearer’s retina, at which point the image is magnified nearly three times.
A really cool thing about this lens is selective magnification.The researchers used a modified pair of Samsung polarized 3D TV glasses to switch between normal (light passing through the aperture of the central lens) and magnified view (polarizing filter blocking the central lens and allowing light from the mirror).
The technology could help the roughly 2 million people in the U.S. with macular degeneration — the most common cause of blindness in people over the age of 55.The macula of the eye, which processes visual details, slowly degenerates, causing vision loss in the central field of vision, and patients cannot recognize faces or perform simple tasks.
Current treatments for macular degeneration include invasive surgery or wearing glasses with very thick lenses.While research continues, the development of this new magnifying glass technology has the potential to improve the quality of life of millions of people around the world by using these “normal” lenses.
Further applications could include military use to increase the sight of soldiers.(The research was originally funded by DARPA.) But there’s no reason to stop there.We can imagine that a pair of these lenses would be interesting or useful to anyone.Perhaps the ability to stretch is just one property of future contact lenses—others could include filters to see beyond our normal spectrum, tiny cameras and augmented reality.
Telescopic Contact Lens
That said, for the foreseeable future, we can only be content with dreams of switchable X-ray contacts with telescopic lenses and onboard computers.
The project is still in the research phase.Image quality isn’t perfect, the lenses need to be more breathable, the switchable glasses don’t have a blink detector, and most importantly, the contactors haven’t been tested on humans.
The research team is currently working with Paragon Vision Sciences and Innovega to improve lens flexibility and eye oxygenation to increase lens wear time.According to Eric Tramblay, the next-generation lenses are expected to be available for clinical trials in November 2013.
Post time: Jul-29-2022
