"Zoom" contact lens being developed to aid patients with AMD

While it won't provide people with Superman's x-ray vision, a contact lens is being developed that has a built-in zoom that would restore vision to people with macular degeneration. This contact lens is only slightly larger than a regular contact lens but it has the ability to shift from normal vision to zoom vision using 3D glasses that switch on the polarization film over the lens. Almost 11 million adults in the U.S. have a form of age-related macular degeneration with AMD being the leading cause of vision loss in Americans over the age of 60. Currently, the low-vision reading aids that are available are inconvenient hand-held or head-mounted magnifiers. The lens, currently being developed by a team of researchers led by Dr. Eric Tremblay, has already been tested on a mechanical eye and those results were published in Optics Express. The next step for these "super" lenses is to be tested in clinical trials. The research team is presently working on improving the resolution of the magnified image.*