Ron Blum is an ophthalmologist who is developing eyeglass lenses that apparently can give the wearer super vision. The system is based on “intelligent” lenses made up of electronically-controlled “pixels” that can be discretely adjusted. Blum claims that his PixelOptics lenses will not only correct the wearer’s vision but could also boost it to better than 20/20, possibly even better than 20/10. Blum’s company just scored a $3.5 million Department of Defense grant to build a prototype that he hopes will be ready in a year. From Wired News:
“Theoretically, this should be able to double the distance that a person can see clearly,” (Blum) says…
Technicians scan the eyeball with an aberrometer — a device that measures aberrations that can impede vision — and then the pixels are programmed to correct the irregularities.
Traditional glasses correct lower-order aberrations like nearsightedness, farsightedness and astigmatisms. PixelOptics’ lenses handle higher-order aberrations that are much more difficult to detect and correct.
Thanks to technologies created for astronomical telescopes and spy satellites, aberrometers can map a person’s eye with extreme accuracy. Lasers bounce off the back of the eyeball, and structures in the eye scatter the resulting beam of light.
Software reads the scattered beam and creates a map of the patient’s eye, including tiny abnormalities such as bumps, growths and valleys. The pixelated eyeglass lens is then tuned to refract light in a way that corrects for those high-level aberrations.