Telescope Eyes

Contact lenses are wonderful for correcting vision in most people, but do little for those suffering from age-related macular degeneration (AMD), who often lose the ability to see small details like the contours of a face or letters on a page. To tackle AMD's special version of blurriness, an international team has designed contact lenses with a built-in zoom that could one day be used by people with AMD.

Dr. Joseph Ford, an electrical and computer engineer at the University of California, San Diego, and a team of Swiss collaborators designed a contact lens that takes light as it hits the eye and magnifies it onto peripheral parts of the retina. They tested the lens on a life-sized model of a human eye and found that it could magnify the view by three times.

As the leading cause of legal blindness in Americans over 55, solutions for AMD are in high demand.

Ford's contact lens and 3-D glasses system, which was funded by DARPA, would be a significant improvement to the current optical magnifier eyeglasses, which are bulky and not very sleek.

This concept could also be an alternative to the implantable telescope for AMD, which won approval from the Food and Drug Administration back in December.

At present the plastic infused into this prototype lens can't be used with human eyes, and until then contact lenses may provide a way to make AMD a little less debilitating. In fact, contact lenses are a great choice for many Americans to improve their overall eye health.

For more details, you can read the original article by Nsikan Akpan, PhD published on June 27, 2013 on medicaldaily.com.

Our eyes are very delicate organs, and we should plan routine eye exams whether or not we notice any problems. An eye exam will not only pick up vision problems but also early signs of disease, which if left untreated may lead to serious problems.

Visit 20/20 Eyeglass Superstore today and check out our great discounts on both contact lenses and eyeglasses. We look forward to seeing you!