An
international team of researchers have created the first telescopic contact
lens; a contact lens that, when it’s equipped, gives you the power to zoom your
vision almost three times. Yes, this is the first ever example of a bionic eye
that effectively gives you Superman-like eagle-eye vision.
As
you can see in the photo above, the telescopic contact lens has two very
distinct regions. The center of the lens allows light to pass straight through,
providing normal vision. The outside edge, however, acts as a telescope capable
of magnifying your sight by 2.8x.
This
is about the same as looking through a 100mm lens on a DSLR. For comparison, a
pair of bird-watching binoculars might have a magnification of 15x. The
examples shown in the image below give you a good idea of what a 2.8x optical
zoom would look like in real life.
The
main breakthrough is that this telescopic contact lens is just 1.17mm thick,
allowing it to be comfortably worn. Other attempts at granting telescopic
vision have included: a 4.4mm-thick contact lens (too thick for real-world
use), telescopic spectacles
(cumbersome and ugly), and most recently a telescopic lens implanted into the
eye itself. The latter is currently the best option currently available, but it
requires surgery and the image quality isn’t excellent.
To
create a 1.17mm-thick telescope, the researchers —led by Joseph Ford of UCSD
and Eric Tremblay of EPFL — had to be rather creative. The light that will be
magnified enters the edge of the contact lens, is bounced around four times inside
the lens using patterned aluminum mirrors, and then beamed to the edge of the
retina at the back of your eyeball. The mirrors magnify the image 2.8 times,
but also correct for chromatic aberration, resulting in a surprisingly high
fidelity image.
To
switch between normal and telescopic vision, the central (normal, unmagnified)
region of the contact lens has a polarizing filter in front of it —and then the
wearer equips a pair of 3D TV spectacles. By switching the polarizing stateof
the spectacles (a pair of active, liquid crystal Samsung 3D specs in this
case), the user can choose between normal and magnified vision.
In
case you were wondering, these solutions all primarily exist for one reason: To
help restore sight to people with age-related macular degeneration. AMD damages
the high-resolution fovea at the center of the retina, but generally the
low-resolution outer region (perifovea) still works.
Without
the fovea, people with AMD can’t make out fine details, such as type on a page.
These telescopic spectacles, lenses, and implants focus light onto this outer
region, giving people with AMD the ability to make out these details.
The
current telescopic contact lens is made out of PMMA, a gas-impermeable polymer
that old, uncomfortable contact lenses used to be made of. To bring their lens
to market, the researchers will need to switch over to rigid gas permeable (RGP)
polymers, which modern, comfortable contact lenses are made from. While these
telescopic lenses are obviously intended for people who suffer from AMD,
there’s nothing to prevent a healthy person from wearing them and achieving
better-than-human (superhuman)
Published
on July 1st, 2013
Written
by: Sebastian Anthony
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