They manufacture contact lenses that function as telescopes

Scientists from the Lausanne Federal Institute of Technology in Switzerland (EPFL) have developed contact lenses that, used with special glasses, offer a telescopic view, allowing you to see objects three times larger than Its original size.

The system has been designed to help people with age-related macular degeneration, who have part of their damaged retina, and have a mechanism that allows users to switch between normal vision and telescopic vision according to their needs in each Time. This will make it much easier for patients to develop everyday tasks like reading, identifying faces or taking care of themselves.

The lenses have small aluminum mirrors that form a telescope inside a ring in the center of the lens. The prototype created is 8 millimeters in diameter, 1 mm thick in the center of the lens, which provides a normal vision, and 1.17 millimeters thick in the ring-shaped telescope which increases by 2.8 times the image. To move from normal to magnified view, users use liquid crystal goggles that were originally created for three-dimensional TVs. The liquid crystals of the glasses electrically change the orientation of the polarized light to cross one of the two lens areas according to the type of vision chosen.

The lenses are made with polymethyl methacrylate, which according to their own creadoresno is the most suitable for contact lenses because it is impervious to gases and limits the time it can be used. They are now developing a second model with similar design but materials that allow the passage of gases to keep the eye oxygenated in prolonged use. Permeable versions of the telescopic lens will be ready to undergo clinical trials in November, according to Tremblay’s advance.