New telescopic contact lens prototype unveiled

An innovative new telescopic contact lens prototype has been showcased at the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Developed by researchers at Switzerland's Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, the contacts incorporate a thin reflective telescope inside a 1.55mm thick lens. Small mirrors within bounce light around to expand the perceived size of objects and magnify the user's view.

Work has also been done to make the lenses as breathable as possible, making them a potentially useful everyday solution for people with low vision and age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

The team also took the opportunity to showcase a pair of complementary smart glasses that allow wearers of the contact lenses to switch between normal and magnified vision by winking.

Using a small light source and light detector to recognise winks and ignore blinks, the glasses work by picking up winks of the right eye to enable magnification, and left eye winks to switch back to normal vision.

Project leader Eric Tremblay, from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, said: "There is a strong need for something more integrated, and a contact lens is an attractive direction. At this point this is still research, but we are hopeful it will eventually become a real option for people with AMD."