Telescopic Contact Lens Could Help Patients with AMD

While normal contact lenses correct many people’s eyesight, they can’t improve the blurry vision of people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD), because correcting the eye’s focus cannot restore the central vision lost from a retina damaged by AMD. But, looking to change that is a team of DARPA-funded researchers from the US and Switzerland. The team, 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 using a modified pair of liquid crystal eyeglasses. With refinements, they say that the system could offer AMD patients a relatively unobtrusive way to enhance their vision.