Medgadget tipster Tom Brander alerts us to an article at Wired, about a company called PixelOptics of Roanoke, Virginia, that has just won a $3.5 million Pentagon grant to realize its “supervision” technology. The company is trying at first to develop its technology for electro-active spectacles that correct for presbyopia. Wired explains:
At the heart of PixelOptics’ technology are tiny, electronically-controlled pixels embedded within a traditional eyeglass lens. 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.
According to the company, its future lenses “… may have the ability to dynamically change to ones environment and thus can adjust for aberration changes caused by the environment or working conditions (for example lighting, altitude, convergence / divergence, tear blink). Individuals of numerous occupations, sports and hobbies can benefit from better vision.”
The company website…
The technology…
The Wired article…