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If there’s one big problem with the Internet, it’s that you can’t be on it all day, every day, without interruption. No, sometimes you must take your eyes away from the screen. Those are sad times, but they will soon be in the past. Researchers have made progress toward interactive contact lens displays. Here’s the future envisioned by the developers:
They envisage hundreds more pixels could be embedded in the flexible lens to produce complex holographic images.
For example, drivers could wear them to see journey directions or their vehicle’s speed projected onto the windscreen.
Similarly, the lenses could take the virtual world of video gaming to a new level.
Link -via Dave Barry | Photo: Flickr user skippyjon
Chandrashekhar Chawan, an optometrist, wanted to offer his customers an extra sparkle for their eyes. Initially, he tried gold, but it didn’t work that well. After his wife had diamonds mounted into her teeth, Chawan then realized that jewels present the luminous effect for which he was searching. Now he sells thick contact lenses with diamonds inside for $15,000 a set. Link -via The Presurfer | Photo: Shekhar Eye Research
The biotech company Sensimed has developed a contact lens that monitors the user’s glaucoma:
The Triggerfish lens is made of the same silicon hydrogel as many of the soft contact lenses currently on the market, but embedded within it is a microprocessor and a strain gauge that encircles its outer edge. When fluid accumulates in the eye, the diameter of the cornea changes, and that change is picked up by the strain gauge. Data is processed and then transmitted via radio frequency to a receiver.
This data can then be used by doctors to provide specific and timely treatments, as well as give researchers a continuous stream of data about the progress of the disease in the same patient.
Link via Popular Science | Photo: Sensimed | Previously on Neatorama: Contact Lenses that Change Color to Alert Diabetics of Glucose Levels
Jin Zhang, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, is developing contact lenses that change color with the user’s blood sugar level. This could allow diabetics to monitor themselves without frequent blood samples. The technology:
…uses extremely small nanoparticles embedded into the hydrogel lenses. These engineered nanoparticles react with glucose molecules found in tears, causing a chemical reaction that changes their colour.
Babak A. Parviz, a bionanotechnologist at the University of Washington, writes that in the future, biotech innovations could lead to display screens inside contact lenses:
These visions (if I may) might seem far-fetched, but a contact lens with simple built-in electronics is already within reach; in fact, my students and I are already producing such devices in small numbers in my laboratory at the University of Washington, in Seattle [see sidebar, "A Twinkle in the Eye"]. These lenses don’t give us the vision of an eagle or the benefit of running subtitles on our surroundings yet. But we have built a lens with one LED, which we’ve powered wirelessly with RF. What we’ve done so far barely hints at what will soon be possible with this technology.
Conventional contact lenses are polymers formed in specific shapes to correct faulty vision. To turn such a lens into a functional system, we integrate control circuits, communication circuits, and miniature antennas into the lens using custom-built optoelectronic components. Those components will eventually include hundreds of LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye, such as words, charts, and photographs. Much of the hardware is semitransparent so that wearers can navigate their surroundings without crashing into them or becoming disoriented. In all likelihood, a separate, portable device will relay displayable information to the lens’s control circuit, which will operate the optoelectronics in the lens.
Link via CrunchGear
A new procedure to help people with damaged corneas is showing promise in three patients so far. A team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney takes stem cells from the patient’s good eye and cultures them in a contact lens. When the cells have multiplied, they place the lens over the patient’s affected eye and leave it for around three weeks. During that time, the cells begin to grow into the damaged cornea and help regenerate it. In effect, it’s a stem cell transplant from one eye to the other.
Researcher Dr Nick Di Girolamo said: ‘The procedure is totally simple and cheap.
‘Unlike other techniques, it requires no foreign human or animal products, only the patient’s own serum, and is completely non-invasive.
‘There’s no suturing, there is no major operation. You don’t need any fancy equipment.’
The contact lenses used in the operation are already widely used after eye surgery.
The researchers hope the technique can be adapted for other parts of the eye, such as the retina, and even elsewhere in the body.
Ernest is a 15-year-old cat who lives at a shelter in Godshill on the Isle of Wight. He suffers from entropion, a condition where the eyelids roll inward and cause inflammation. Surgery might correct the condition, but veterinarians were concerned about how such an old cat would react to an anesthetic. The solution? Contact lenses!
Centre manager Paula Sadler, 56, said: ‘Before Earnest was given the contact lenses he was quite squinty and had trouble seeing where he was going.
‘Now his eyes have opened up and he has a new lease of life.
