Presbyopia Correction with a Smart Phone

hubie writes:

For many, one of the early signs that they are transitioning in life from a codger to an old codger is the onset of presbyopia. This is also known as "farsightedness" and is caused by loss of elasticity of the lens of the eye. Children can typically handle vision of 10 D or smaller, which is to say they can focus from infinity down to 10 cm away or less from their face. However, as a person ages that minimum distance increases until they get into their 50s and realize their arms are too short to hold their book any longer. Typical corrections are bifocal or progressive spectacles, as well as multifocal contact lenses and intra-ocular lenses. There are inherent trade-offs in all of these solutions, such as trading near or far vision enhancement at the expense of image contrast.

As reported in a Nature Scientific Report paper, researchers from Spain have built a "smart glasses"-style real-time prototype presbyopia correction system:

The approach introduced in this paper is non-invasive and also offers a dynamic continuous focus range solution as in the natural lens. By using tunable opto-electronics lenses, it is possible to provide a focusing range only limited by the digital-to-analog converter of the system, in addition to the maximum and minimum focal length physically achievable by the opto-electronics lenses. In our prototype, a real-time pupil tracking system running on a smartphone is used to dynamically control the optical power required in the opto-electronics lenses. Providing a smooth and comfortable visual experience to the subject requires relatively fast changes in the applied power, therefore, a heavily integrated and computationally efficient system is essential to properly drive this Dynamic Auto-Accommodation Glasses.

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