by Joel Harrison
24. August 2010 15:16
Thanks to researchers from MIT, eye exams necessary to get a prescription for contact lenses may soon become much quicker and cheaper. They devised a method of determining a person’s refractive error with the use of a mobile phone and a simple device clipped onto its LCD screen. The patient looks into a lens, pressing the phone’s buttons until the picture on the screen, consisting of parallel green and red lines, is correct. The procedure, repeated several times for each eye, is as short as two minutes. Special software installed on the mobile calculates all the data and provides its user with information for a prescription.
The creators of the project believe that the device will be especially useful in the developing world, as routine eye exams are unavailable to many people there due to their cost and a lack of proper facilities. Uncorrected refractive errors are the world’s second most common cause of blindness, so providing the possibility to undergo basic eye exams is of utmost importance.
Currently the research team is carrying out clinical trials, whose results have been very impressive.
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