Now Zoom In And Out With A New Version Of Telescopic Contact Lens!

The latest version of telescopic contact lens has been unveiled by researchers that allows the user to zoom in and out with a wink of an eye. To avail the special function, the contact lenses need to be paired with smart glasses that can recognise winks and ignore blinks so that wearers can switch between normal and magnified vision.

According to Optics specialist Eric Tremblay from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, these lenses are promising enough for low vision and age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Glasses with mounted telescopes are already available in the market for people suffering from AMD but these glasses look too heavy and social interaction also faces challenges. They are also incapable of tracking eye movement and users need to specially position their eyes and head to use the glasses.

The first version of telescopic contact lenses was announced in 2013. Since then work has been going on to fine-tune the lens membranes and develop accessories so that the eye-wear becomes smarter and more comfortable too. The new version is more useful in daily life. The lenses incorporate a thin reflective telescope inside a 1.55mm thick lens. Its small mirrors help expand the size of objects and it feels to be looking through low magnification binoculars. Right now, the telescopic contacts are made through scleral lens which are large in diameter and are valuable for special cases like people who have ill-shaped corneas.

Scleral lens are safe and comfortable and are an attractive platform to be used in optics, sensors and telescopic contact lens. The final lenses have been made out of assembled pieces of plastics, aluminium mirrors and polarising thin films, along with safe glues. The lenses are more breathable too as eyes need steady supply of oxygen. The lens have tiny air channels to allow oxygen and it can get into the cornea through some impermeable optical structures. The electronic glasses, paired with lenses, use a small light source and light detector to recognise winks and ignore blinks. The lens prototype has been unveiled at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Jose, California.