New research led by UC San Diego electrical engineering professor Joseph Ford and UC San Diego alumnus Eric Tremblay is getting a lot of media attention including stories in CBS News, Smithsonian.com, Huffington Post, Time, VentureBeatand New Scientist. Comparisons to Superman and the Terminator abound, but, in reality, the telescopic contact lens is designed for patients suffering from the very real problem of age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness among older adults in the western world. A press release describing the research publishedin Optics Express explains:
Contact lenses correct many people's eyesight but do nothing to improve the blurry vision of those suffering from age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness among older adults in the western world. That's because simply correcting the eye's focus cannot restore the central vision lost from a retina damaged by AMD. Now a team of researchers from the United States and Switzerland led by University of California San Diego Professor Joseph Ford has created a slim, telescopic contact lens that can switch between normal and magnified vision. With refinements, the system could offer AMD patients a relatively unobtrusive way to enhance their vision. The team reports its work today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express.
Tremblay is currently at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.
