Scientists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) have developed somecontact lenses that, used together with special glasses, offer a telescopic vision, allowing you to see objects three times larger than their original size.
The system has been designed to helppeople with age-related macular degeneration, which have part of their retina damaged, and has a mechanism that allows users toswitch between normal vision and telescopic visionaccording to your needs at all times. In this way, patients will have it much easier when carrying out daily tasks such as reading, identifying faces or taking care of themselves.
The lenses havesmall aluminum mirrors that form a telescope within a ring in the center of the lens. The prototype created is 8 millimeters in diameter, 1 millimeter thick in the center of the lens, which provides normal vision, and 1.17 millimeters thick in the ring-shaped telescope that magnifies the image by 2.8 times. To go from normal to magnified vision, users use liquid crystal glasses that were originally created for three-dimensional televisions. TheLiquid glasses in glasses electrically change the orientation of polarized lightso that it passes through one of the two areas of the lenses according to the type of vision chosen.
The lenses are made withpolymethyl methacrylate, which according to its own creators is not the most suitable for contact lenses because it is impermeable to gases and limits the time in which they can be worn. Now they are developing a second model with a similar design but materials that allow the passage of gases so that the eye remains oxygenated in prolonged use. Thepermeable versions of the telescopic lensThey will be ready to undergo clinical trials in November, according to Tremblay.
