Contact Lens with Zoom In, Zoom Out feature 2013

Contact Lens with Zoom In, Zoom Out feature 2013

RESEARCHERS have designed the world's first Terminator-stvle' con-tact lens that would allow wearers to zoom in and zoom out.

The 1. 17 mm-thick prototype contains two separate optical paths: one for magnified vision and one for regular vision.

Wearers will he able see normally through the central region, while selective blocking makes it possible for the user to switch between the two types of view.

Thus, the user can effectively zoom in and out.

Researchers from the US and Switzerland led by University of California San Diego Professor Joseph Ford said, with refinements, the system could offer Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) patients a relatively unobtrusive way to enhance their vision.

"For a visual aid to be accepted it needs to be highly convenient and unobtrusive." said co-author Eric Tremblay of the Ecole Polytechnique Federate de Lausanne (EPFL). The new lens system uses tightly fitting minor surfaces to make a telescope that has been integrated into a conical lens just over a millimetre thick. The lens has a dual modality: the center of the lens provides unmagnified vision, while the ring-shaped telescope located at the periphery of the regular contact lens magnifies the view 2.8 times.

To switch hack and forth between the magnified view and normal vision, users would wear a pair of liquid crystal glasses originally made for viewing 3-D televisions.

These glasses selectively block either the magnifying portion of the contact lens or its unmagnified center. The liquid crystals in the glasses electrically change the orientation of Polaris light, allowing light with oik orientation or the other to pass through the glasses to the contact leas. The team tested their design both with computer modelling and by fabricating the lens. They also created a life-sized model eye that they used to capture images through their contact lens-eyeglasses system.

Researchers used a robust material commonly used in early contact lenses called polvmethvl methacry-late(PMMA).