Bionic Eyes for Everyone 123
Rob Riggs writes "As seen on this SlashCode using site, scientists at the University of Rochester are working on a project to bring adaptive optics, technology used in ground-based astronomy, to the human eye. They expect to achieve 20/10 vision and enhanced contrast for everyone, but this article claims 20/2.5 is ultimately possible." The best thing about this story is that the submitter picked the rarely-used "Upgrades" category for it.
Re:imagine the possibilities! (Score:2)
Samba Information HQ
I can see this as an upgrade. (Score:1)
And you thought 20/15 was as good as it gets (Score:3)
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This does sound cool but... (Score:3)
Once tested and proven for long term usage these sort of procedures will help people with bad vision from having to deal with contacts and glasses. Maybe then we can all become fighter pilots and race car drivers!
Lord Arathres
Re:imagine the possibilities! (Score:1)
Re:And you thought 20/15 was as good as it gets (Score:5)
Disclaimer: I'm no optha^M^M^Mopthi^M^M^M eye doctor, but here's how I understand it to work:
Your vision in feet / Normal vision in feet
For example, if you have 20/10, that means you can see at 20' what most people have to get within 10' in order to see. (A street sign, breast size, writing on the wall, whatever.)
At my last checkup, I had 20/40, meaning I have worse than average vision. I have to be only 20' away from the chart to get the same results that the normal person can see within 40'.
A good way to explain the theoretical max of 20/2.5 that they're talking about is to think about computer monitors. If you sit 2.5' away from your 17" monitor, you can read everything fine. These robotic eyes would allow you to read the same text on the same monitor, standing TWENTY FEET AWAY, with the exact same accuracy as someone sitting just 2.5' away. That's astounding.
Or think of it another way: it's pretty hard to get within 2.5' of Natalie Portman, but if you plunk down the money for these roboeyes, you only have to get 20' away in order to find out if she's really got perfect skin or not.
Cosmetic Bionics (Score:3)
I currently have 20/10 vision naturally, and I must say it is a huge benifit in daily life. To be able to give this to everyone would not dramiatically improve the quality of life for most, but it would be something worth investing a couple of thousand dollars in.
As I'm sure most slashdotters are framiliar with, most sci-fi that discusses bionic eyes touches on the idea of night-vision, zoom, and theremal imaging. All of which sound great, but now that I come to think about it (since this is apparently becoming a sci-reality) I'm a bit concerned with the idea of everyone having thermal vision. Talk about a huge invasion of privacy. I'm an apartment dweller and would not like for other tenants snooping on me simply by looking through the wall. Being that the world is becoming infatuated with voyerism (how many reality TV shows are out there right now?) I would suspect that as soon as you started implanting this sort of thing into people it would very quickly find malicious use.
disc-chord
Re:This does sound cool but... (Score:4)
This is why laser eye correction is taking so long to catch on. There were some real butcher jobs early on, and getting your eyes worked on is nothing like getting some liposuction done. (Or so I'm told.) My eyesight is just way, way too valuable to get frivolous elective surgery done. My glasses work just fine, thank you, and they're a lot cheaper than surgery.
Re:This does sound cool but... (Score:1)
Lord Arathres
Re:imagine the possibilities! (Score:1)
-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!
Re:And you thought 20/15 was as good as it gets (Score:1)
No doubt, many people such as yourself with 20/40 would have lots of fun with 20/10, and I'm very happy for you guys to have this opportunity approaching.
disc-chord
Current eye surgery already does wonders! (Score:4)
Anyway, at the post-op, they said it would not be unexpected to have the vision get a little fuzzier and then improve even more over the next week a the corneal swelling maxes out and recedes. I can't imagine it getting any better than this...
Aliasing (Score:2)
I'll wait for the anti-aliasing patch, I think. And I thought I was happy about the GTK patch...
signature smigmature
this technology is vaporware (Score:3)
Movies watermarked for joe blow (SSN 101-69-1984) will not appear as black blobs in the eyes of jane doe.
Fortunately, I already patented this technology.
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
Massively exciting. (Score:2)
My vision is not correctable with glasses, as the problem exists primarily in my retina (lacking rods/cones). Short of something like this I have no way to significantly improve my vision. No laser surgery does this, in fact there is really nothing on the market to do this. Personally, I would be willing to be a test subject or pay $20,000 for this treatment.
If you have correctable vision (say you can get to about 20/40 or so somehow) I envy you. I can't drive, I have to take a magnifier with me anywhere I go, and it is very difficult for me to get around. The consequences of being unable to drive are manifold, most people can hardly comprehend it. I can't live in places without above average to excellent public transpotation. This means only major cities, and only major cities with good transit. For reference, in the US, there are perhaps 5 major cities with really manageable public transport (for me). Of these, I would need to live typically in or within walking distance of the downtown area. It's basically like being told you can only ever live in a select few places.
If you're curious about the '20/x' scale, here's a brief description. The first number (typically 20) is the average distance (in any unit you like) that an individual can see an object with clairty. The x is the distance at which, if I could see the object at '20' a person with normal vision could get the same image. So if I have, say, 20/150 then what I see at 20 feet, you could see at 150 feet. That is a factor of 7.5x. The thought of having 20/20 or better vision is like a distant dream for me, and the faster this comes around the happier I will be.
Needless to say, I do not play golf.
-wd
--
chip norkus(rl); white_dragon('net'); wd@routing.org
mercenary albino programmer for hire
There is an easier way (Score:1)
Re:imagine the possibilities! (Score:5)
Yes, being in the glamorous world of system administration, that situation comes up often.
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The progress of change (Score:1)
Ever get the feeling that you'll be laying on your deathbed about to kick off and suddenly they'll announce that they have cured every ailment and disease? It's great but it sort of sucks in a way.
yafla! [yafla.com]
ahhh, slashcode (Score:2)
There was also a story [slashdot.org] on this [slashdot.org] slashcode-using site.
Seriously though, looks like they might be rolling this out a lot sooner than we thought, which is pretty cool. I've put off getting lasik myself partly because I'd like to see how far they can stretch this technology first.
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Re:Current eye surgery already does wonders! (Score:2)
Re:This does sound cool but... (Score:1)
Re:Aliasing (Score:1)
Re:imagine the possibilities! (Score:1)
Re:Current eye surgery already does wonders! (Score:2)
Congratulations on your improved vision. I'm happy for you, and I wish you the best. But a friend of mine lost all vision in one of his eyes, and about 50% of the vision in the other eye. It's not all wine and roses in eyesurgeryville.
Buying upgrades? (Score:3)
The Pixels of Your Eyes (Score:3)
For those who missed it, my original post is here [slashdot.org], complete with the chain of responses from outraged laser geeks, my counter response, etc.
To recap: my argument is that the Light/Dark spots you see in the speckling of laser light are the individual Pixels (cones and rods, actually) of your own eyes. I ommitted to mention this effect probably comes from the interferance of Laser light on the retina of your eye. The bottom line is that each sensory cell in the eye, be it a cone or a rod, sends one point of brightness data to the brain, thus the speckle effect. This is noted indirectly by this section from the article mentioned above:
Although there are many potential benefits of super-normal visual optics, there is at least one expected penalty. Given a dramatic increase in optical quality of the retinal image, the photoreceptor mosaic will appear relatively coarse by comparison, as shown in Figure 5. As a result of this mismatch, very fine spatial details in the retinal image will be smaller than the distance between neighboring cones and therefore will not be registered properly in the neural image. This mis-representation of the image due to neural undersampling by a relatively coarse array of photoreceptors is called "aliasing". However, for everyday vision the penalty of aliasing is likely to be outweighed by the reward of higher contrast sensitivity and higher detection acuity.
In this context, this causes the aliasing effect because each receptors reports only one dot of light intensity data back to the brain. If the receptors sent more than one data point to the brain at the same time for a higher resolution, then the aliasing effect would still be there, although at a much smaller point.
See my original comments for the full details, etc. but it is still my contention the the effect of seeing the speckles in laser light is the individual variation of reception of light intensity by the individual cells of your eye.
This is a way for you to notice the granuality, the pixels of your eyes.
It wouldn't help (Score:5)
Some personal observations (Score:5)
I have one good eye and one not so good eye, so norally 95% of my vision is with my good eye. Working on my car I got a piece of rust in the good eye and it was subsequently bandaged for a week. The strangest things happened...I really could see fine but the processing of the info was terrible, especially at first...my judgement of position and velocity was way off, and this was NOT due to a lack of depth perception, as I can operate with just my good eye fine.
The most startling occurrence was when I was later brave enough to drive and I was behind a car on the highway. His brake lights came on, in a flash I knew he was stopping but with only my bad eye, not used to processing this kind of info, I couldn't determine how quickly he was decelerating, tapping his brakes or jamming them. I panicked and ripped the bandage off my other eye and instantly I "understood" how everything was moving around me.
New optics would be great, but I guess I really want a CPU upgrade :)
SuperID
Side effects? (Score:2)
Makes me want to go out and get this surgery right now! Except it's not available yet. Still I'm a bit worried about the side effects [fast.net]. At least we don't have to worry about eyeballs collapsing anymore. Until the military starts using this technology on their own pilots and divers, and it gets a lot cheaper, I'm going to hold back.
cryptochrome
That's Awesome!!! (Score:1)
JDW
Re:And you thought 20/15 was as good as it gets (Score:2)
For me this sounds like a really silly way to define vision. If in the future average person has corrected vision that equals 20/10 in todays scale will it be then 20/20? How do you define Normal Vision?
Better way to describe vision quality would be to tell how long away can a person read letters printed in 20 pt font or how small characters can a person read from 10 feet. Of course we should use symbols (instead of letters) that don't have that much visual clues against other symbols (Think about letter "I" vs "M" for example - pretty much easier to see from distance than "D" vs. "O" or "V" vs "Y"). Vision would then be something like 2.0 pt/ft meaning person could read text written in 10 pt from 5 feet or 20pt from 10 feet.
Of course there's still no way to tell real vision. I mean refractive error is one thing and (best case) vision precision is another. For example I'm near-sighted and I can see in short distances with higher clarity than average person. When needed ability to see far I'm almost blind, though.
_________________________
Re:And you thought 20/15 was as good as it gets (Score:3)
20/20 is "average vision," with average determined the same way you'd define a mean on a normal distribution. Naturally, there will be outliers in both directions. Thus, there are a fair number of people with better-than-average vision, by definition.
It's important to realize as well that most people have their vision checked with a visual acuity scale designed to determine distance vision... one of those pesky things with the gigantic letter "E" at the top. It's an extremely gross measure of visual acuity, meant only as a screening test. Near vision, astigmatisim, visual field defects, isolated visual irregularities, etc. don't show up. The test itself is often woefully inaccurate. So take your numbers as a rough estimate, not something laid down in stone.
--- [DrPsycho [zombo.com]] Coping with reality since 1975.
Meaning of 20/20 (Score:1)
20/20 means that you are able to see at 20 feet of distance what a normal person can see at 20 feet, then you have a normal vision.
20/10 means that you see at 20 feet what a normal person sees at 10 feet.
20/100 means that you need to be as close as 20 feet to see what normal people see at 100 feet.
Well, you get how it works, I hope.
I had never heard of this kind of measurements where I live and I wear glasses so I suppose it will help some of you to understand better the meaning of the article.
20/2.5 == Migraine? (Score:3)
--Brogdon
Re:This does sound cool but... (Score:5)
This might not be the place to discuss the pathology of diabetic retinopathy in detail, but I'll babble enough so you can understand the therapy for it. Changes in the blood vessels which supply the retina in the early stages of this condition lead to inefficient oxygen delivery to the active tissues -- ischemia. As a response, the blood vessels branch, grow, and proliferate to combat this. This is a Bad Thing, because the new vessels can get in the way of the retinal surface, or break causing haemmorhages, retinal detatchment.
The treatment of choice for this is a laser therapy, different from the Lasix/Excimer cornea-modifying modalities, which goes by the super-funky name "pan-retinal laser photocoagulation" (I love saying that) where peripheral parts of the retina are zapped with an argon laser. This reduces the metabolic oxygen requirement for the peripheral retina... such that the more important central structures are spared. Done right, and at the right time, this can reduce the incidence of severe visual loss by 50%, and as much as 90% in some studies.
I don't want to sound offtopic (discussing a different laser therapy), but I'm concerned that someone who is diabetic might fall into this thread and assume that all laser therapies are the same, and thus make judgements about photocoagulation therapy based on the concerns raised about Excimer.
--- [DrPsycho [zombo.com]] Coping with reality since 1975.
With 20/2.5 vision, I could read Slashdot! (Score:1)
4K squared (Score:2)
4K x 4K grids are about the finest you can see.
They run testest displaying sine wave stripes
at various wavelengths, color contrasts and distances. Less if there is a lot of motion, dark, or little color contrast.
20/5? I want Zoom Vision! (Score:2)
A better solution would be zoom vision where you can control the magnification.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
Re:Current eye surgery already does wonders! (Score:1)
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Re:The Pixels of Your Eyes (Score:1)
Re:And you thought 20/15 was as good as it gets (Score:1)
I commonly get this type of situation.
Me "There is a blue Ford Truck at the side of the road."
Passenger "You can see a truck?"
This is only a near sighted rating. Any one with glasses knows that their prescription is written in Diopters required to correct your vision. (My prescription: right 0, left -.25 I don't wear glasses.) Optometrists usually do not use the 20/20 scale.
Re:Massively exciting. (Score:3)
All the best
Brian
Re:Some personal observations (Score:5)
Not only was my visual clarity about twice as sharp as it had been with the old glasses, there was the significant difference that my peripheral vision was in focus, unlike peripheral vision with glasses.
The visual clarity was overwhelming - I was noticing so much - the edges of leaves on trees that had previously been sort of an indistinct green blur, details of people's hair across the street... so much sharp detail on the complex, organic stuff in the real world.
It gave me a headache within a couple of hours.
My brain was not used to getting so much visual information. The "software" for visual processing was suddenly having to deal with twice as much resolution, and it was constantly "getting behind" processing details that I didn't actually need. Over the next week, the sensation and problems went away as I got used to it - the brain is very adaptive.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
I'm not sure aliasing is a permanent problem. (Score:1)
Re:The Pixels of Your Eyes (Score:2)
Which is not what I said. I said that each cell sends back data for one cell. Each cell is one sensor, averaging, if you will, the input across it. Of course interferance varies the intensity of the light on the surface of the cells. (Well duh!)
Take a look at the diagram 5 in the original article. Cells receiving lots of light send back one data point saying "bright". Cells receiving not so much send back one data point saying "dark". Really, it is not some other way.
So if you see light dots and darks dots, then you have to have at least one individual cell making a strong response to make the bright dot.
This actually is basic sensor technology at the bilogical level. Individual sensors sending back point data.
Re:20/2.5 == Migraine? (Score:1)
Sounds like a good question, however, and reasearch will have to be done, but I think, that if the change is gradual, the brain will do perfectly well.
Would this increase the risk of torn retinas? (Score:1)
My vision is already 20/10... (Score:1)
20/2.5? (Score:1)
Assume eceryone gets these, using the "enhanced contrast for everyone". (obviously not: many will be afraid, poor - especially in other countries, or the surgery mistakes, etc.) But if it did happen, would we still define 20/20 as we know it? 20/20 is "normal", so would 20/2.5 become the "new 20/20?
Actually, if everyone had perfect vision, we probably wouldn't need to gauge eyesight...
Thermal / X-Ray Vision (Score:1)
Linux PPC (Score:1)
Now all I need is (Score:1)
"If I removed everything here that I thought was pointless, there would be like two messages here."
Hmm (Score:1)
The worst thing is, he accepted it as an upgrades category
Re:Some personal observations (Score:2)
your brain does indeed rely on stereo vision (for which you obviously need both eyes) for detph perception. that's not the brain's only method - it also takes clues from context, such as relative size of known objects. but the stereo vision is its primary method. the problems you describe - trouble with velocity, or in quickly-changing situations - are exactly the result of this sort of limited depth perception.
even if one eye has degraded vision for whatever reason, your brain still makes use of the information that eye provides, particularly for good depth perception.
Does that mean... (Score:2)
sweet (Score:1)
20/2.5 though, that means being able to read over the shoulder of someone on the other side of the room. Oh and monitor and TV technology is going to have to get MUCH better.
On the plus side, books could be something like 1/3 or 1/4th the size they are now. Imagine, no more lugging around giant O'Reilly tomes, now you can have the complete set of Perl books condensed to the size of a cheap paperback!
Re:And you thought 20/15 was as good as it gets (Score:3)
And you know what? It's no big deal. 20/10 doesn't give me superpowers. I've never found it to be unusually useful. Indeed, I can't imagine that it makes one iota of difference in my life.
The 20/200 is annoying, though. I believe I could claim to be legally blind, but that'd probably pose problems for having a drivers' license...
Anyway, I can't see the adaptive optics, 20/10 vision thing being real popular. It just wouldn't be worth the hassle of wearing all the gear.
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Re:Current eye surgery already does wonders! (Score:2)
But once upon a time, I did get a corrective lense for the bad eye.
My god! Did *THAT* make a difference!
You remember those old ViewMaster stereoscopic slideshows? My entire life, for the time I had the one contact lense, was lived in that. Everything within a few feet of me literally "popped out" at me. It was real trippy...
Unfortunately, it's damn difficult to wear a single lense. It feels like one eye has a sheet of plywood stuck in it... so I gave it up. Went back to flatland.
Turns out that beyond a few feet distance, your eyes don't use stereoscopic vision to tell distance. They use other visual cues. Basically, everything in my life look about as 3D as your living room does when viewed from the kitchen...
Better than being blind, I say.
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20/0 (Score:2)
My understanding is like Brento's -- the numbers X/Y mean you can see at X feet as someone with "normal" vision can see at Y feet. So, of course, 20/0 would mean you can see something at 20 feet away with the same accuracy that someone with normal vision would if they stuck it to their eyeball.
I have a similar problem (Score:1)
Luckily for me, I guess, my problem is not with missing rods/cones, but with cones that don't work properly. My particular problem is being researched at Wilmer (Eye Center at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore). I wouldn't anticipate surgery like what's mentioned in the article would do you, or me, any good, but I would think that if anyplace is researching your problem, Wilmer is. Just a thought...
Yeah Baby! (Score:3)
Re:this technology is vaporware (Score:2)
I'm paranoid (Score:1)
Meaningless (Score:1)
Re:Cosmetic Bionics (Score:1)
check it out [onlineathens.com], Sony used to have a video camera on the market that could see through clothing. They modified it to prevent such use quickly after they discovered it could be done, though.
We need a less scrupulous company to manufacture bionic eyes.
Good insight, but plasticity gets in the way. (Score:3)
Really, this is the way it evolved: each part's complexity and accuracy is limited by the others. We wouldn't evolve the optics of eagles unless we also had the neural capability to do something with it.
It doesan't stop at the rods and cones though. The ganglion cells behind them agregate localized cells for transmission to the LGN and then the visual cortex. These too would have to be completely rewired, not to mention the rewiring of the visual cortex, for the increased clarity to do much good at all. The plasticity of the visual track just isn't high enough in adults.
This sort of surgery would have to be done while the brain is still forming its visual pathways, pretty much from 0-8 months. Then, even if we didn't have a higher fovial neural count (and who knows, we might get a higher count if the optic acuity is there early enough), the visual pathways from the retina on back would form based on the higher acuity, helping us make better use of the enhancement, especially, as the paper mentioned, in the area of feature detection, because the bipolar ganglion cells would likely link to smaller clusters of rods and cones, taking advantage of the greater clarity.
Kevin Fox
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Re:Current eye surgery already does wonders! (Score:2)
DMCA (Score:1)
source of when we see copyrighted materials!!!
SWEET!!
No more watching that most unAmerican of material, the unCopyrighted material
:)
Re:Cosmetic Bionics (Score:1)
I assume that poeple will just beef up their security, as infuenced by the media, thousands of products "security" products will flood the market to conter the original technology and eventualy people will forget about the original problem, being concerned by the newest "security" problem at that time.
Personaly, I would prefer if everyone was just plain responsible for their actions, and not need a scapegoat.
Score (-1, Redundant) (Score:1)
:-)
MyopicProwls
Re:The Pixels of Your Eyes (Score:4)
So if you see light dots and darks dots, then you have to have at least one individual cell making a strong response to make the bright dot.
This actually is basic sensor technology at the bilogical level. Individual sensors sending back point data.
This might make sense if there were not redundancy in coding of light. A single point of light is actually sent back by far more than one cell.
You can note that although there are 6-7 million rods and cones, there are only about 1 million retinal ganglion neurons - the neurons sending back information to the rest of the visual system.
And of that 1 million RGNs, only a small fraction are of the appropriate type to be used in high spatial acuity vision. So now we have a few dozen rods contributing to each "signal" that goes back to the brain. Although, in the fovea, this can be a one to one relationship.
In any case, all you can establish by looking at speckling patterns is that the spacing of the speckle is AT LEAST as broad as the spacing of the photoreceptors. Of course you know that the basic reason for the speckle is actually interference from the lit surface. Each reflecting point contains its own in phase laser signal, and these millions of in phase lasers interfere with each other, creating speckle.
Thermal imaging... (Score:2)
That's no big deal... just turn the A/C down to 50 when having sex!
Re:Thermal imaging... (Score:1)
all the turning on the ac would do is provide better contrast to view the persons having sex
Re:It wouldn't help (Score:2)
Also, your post sounds like the people who used to say, "There's no way we'll break the sound barrier -- hardware just can't take it!" You really think no one's gonna come up with a solution to your little problem?
Depth perception (Score:2)
Humans determine visual distance using a several factors.
When both eyes are working our eyes form two vertices of a triangle. The third vertex is whatever we are looking at. We "know" the distance between our eyes and the angles of the eye vertices. This is enough information to determine the distance of the object vertex from our eyes. This works fairly well at close range, but you need both eyes.
We also "know" how big most things in our environment are and can make distance estimates based on perceptual deviations from these sizes.
Thirdly our eyes focus on whatever we are looking at. We can feel how much our eyes need to strain to put an object into focus and derive distance information from that.
You were using one eye so the first, and most reliable method, was unavailable to you. Distance perception via size is not too good because objects come in different sizes and guessing distance based on size is a rather high level process.
Since you can't focus well with your bad eye the third option doesn't work very well either. Thus when you tore of your eye patch you suddenly made your depth perception much more accurate, and since your perception of velocity, in terms of distance from you, is based on depth perception, you could suddenly tell at what rate the car in front of you was accellerating.
The Pixels of Your Eyes (Score:1)
Re:Current eye surgery already does wonders! (Score:2)
Well, except for cmdrtaco's typos. . .
Truly mobile computing (Score:1)
Re:Cosmetic Bionics (Score:1)
Besides, if you're that worried about it, look at TLC. They have a show they run every so often (gets good ratings, I guess) about human sexuality (probably showed it on Valentines day, so it may be a while). They have a thermal view of a couple at one point. That's shot using professional cameras and lenses at close range. Figure a wall or two in the way, and all you get is a big blob, if that.
Re:Side effects? (Score:1)
Until the military starts using this technology on their own pilots and divers, and it gets a lot cheaper, I'm going to hold back.
The US military does use laser vision correction for it's pilots. One of the benfits the Air Force recruiter promised me if I signed up for service was FREE laser vision correction so I could be a pilot.
Of course, I didn't sign up because of the low wages and long term contract so I'm still wearing glasses.
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kaaaameeeeeeehaaaaaameeeeeha!
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Re:It wouldn't help (Score:3)
What might work is if you had an artificial retina that could zoom in, either by muscular control (squinting wil increase the zoom factor from 1x to 5x) but then you'd still have a lot of disorientation because small saccades to look a little to the left while zoomed in, would result in a much greater axial shift (like theshaking when you're looking through binocluars for example).
Most of the biogenetic advancements theorized today would work a lot better on humans built with them from the get-go, instead of tacking on upgrades later. Now if we could only implant our consciousness into younger bioengineered clones of ourselves...
Kevin Fox
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Forget resolution... (Score:2)
Imagine, just for a second, what life would be like if we didn't have to have streetlights, reading lights, big, bright monitors, or even daylight most of the time. You could hike through the woods at night without even noticing a difference, and driving through fog would be no difficulty for your infrared eyes.
All without having to deal with the problems posed by increased resolution in the visual pathway.
Kevin Fox
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Re:Some personal observations (Score:2)
I don't think so. Oh, I agree, the brain is very adaptive, but I don't think that's why you were getting a headache.
If you have poor peripheral vision, why would you spend any time using it? Consequently, the muscles that move your eye around atrophy. When you got the contacts you realized what you were missing and started looking around.
When I was a teenager I had long hair, only got it cut once every six months or so. Every time I would get a headache for a day or two, because my peripheral vision would be usable again (I have 20/10 vision).
It's natural for us to focus our eyes on interesting things. If your peripheral vision suddenly starts identifying more interesting things for you to look at, you get eyestrain from the extra activity.
Glad to hear you like the contacts! ;)
Re:Buying upgrades? (Score:2)
What the hell does he think glasses and contacts are? Or clothing and kitchen knives?
And if he specifically objects to integrated devices, how about pacemakers, hip replacement surgery, bone pins...
There is no logically defensible line between defect/illness correction and capability enhancement; so there is no way in reason to reject the latter without rejecting the former.
Re:It wouldn't help (Score:2)
uh, no. Rod density is highest at the periphery of the retina. There, you will find very few cones. Similarly, you will find very few rods at the center of the retina.
look up any vision science or anatomy text to verify this.
Kawaldeep
early stage testing (Score:1)
Jaeger
www.JohnQHacker.com
GodHatesCalvinists.com
Bionic eyes on the horizon? (Score:1)
I don't know about you, but growing up waaay back in the 20th century, this kind of stuff was just science fiction. The most advanced promise I saw for vision was on the old TV show "That's Incredible", in which they showed how they could make a blind person "see" brail by stimulating the brain directly. It's not a long just to go from that to, say, miniature video cameras to give full video to the blind.
But this isn't restoring sight, it's enhansing it! I've worn glasses most of my life, and the idea of being able to see 20/10 or better is awesome! I just hope it comes in the next ten years...
Whereas programmers. . . (Score:3)
So, while it's not the typical lot of a sysadmin or programmer, it is possible :)
Re:Buying upgrades? (Score:1)
What about the discomfort? (Score:1)
What are the numbers for resultant eye-infection?
What, if any, supplemental medication has to be prescribed - such as eye drops etc...?
What's the effect of the Lasik surgical manoeuvre on eyesight when Williams' apparatus isn't present?
I mean, 20/10, or maybe even 20/2.5, maybe great, but drop your glasses and if your left with 2/300 - well that would stop me getting the op...
Unless they paid me
8)
LASIK isn't wonderful for everyone... (Score:1)
While I haven't had LASIK, and I'm just a lowly member of the glasses/contacts-wearing population, I'm truly bothered by the advertising seen in most big cities regarding LASIK surgery. The ads seem typically only to consist of an attractive woman and an appealing price (usually around $1000) -- the exact same marketing that glasses/contact shops have used for years. The difference is, bad glasses or contacts are, except in rare, rare instances reversible, whereas LASIK is not. If LASIK goes wrong, you're stuck with it for life. It's not something where you just want to pop in over the weekend. IMHO, the risk is so great that the procedure should not be done at this time for purely cosmetic reasons.
A common issue with LASIK, and possibly the bionic eyes mentioned in the above article, seems to be the definition of 20/20. What most people don't know is that one's vision can be poor, even when tests show that it's 20/20. For most people with astigmatism, simply correcting vision to 20/20 will still yield a blurry, poorly defined image for that person -- astigmatism correction needs to be put into place as well. Someone can get LASIK, test out at 20/20, and have double-vision and lens flares. The fact that a bionic eye can simply enhance vision to 20/2.5 isn't impressive unless the image is a comfortable one -- sharp, clearly defined, one that doesn't cause headaches.
While perfect bionic vision may be available in the future, right now, there's no replacement for those OEM eyes. Be careful with them, and caveat emptor...
Eschatfische.
More info (Score:1)
Re:20/2.5 == Migraine? (Score:1)
Re:20/2.5? (Score:2)
The 3/8" size of the 20/20 line on the eye chart is arbitrary, but the 20' is not. At ~20' and beyond the eye is "unfocused", meaning the muscle that controls the accomodative lens is completely relaxed. So if you have "normal eyesight" at 20', you also have "normal eyesight" at any distance over 20'.
However, you could debate that the original subject had "better than normal" eyesight. I remember hearing that about 50% of the American population needs glasses, and that in some populations it's as high as 90%!
I believe that society has adjusted to Snellen's definition of 20/20. Driving, schools, and other modernisms require people to have 20/20 (either natural or corrected) in order to function. If Snellen had picked a subject with worse eyesight, probably all the street signs would be printed in a little bit bigger letters. If we were to give superior vision surgery to everybody, society would probably adjust again and 20/10 vision would become "normal".
It's possible that a very small number of people can see better than 20/10 naturally, because the bottom line on the Snellen eye chart is 20/5.
BUT...Re:Current eye surgery already does wonders! (Score:3)
This was great (other than what they call "glare" at night)... a problem of blurring that only shows up in high contrast conditions.
4 years later, my vision is probably about 20/50 (last measured 20/35) in both eyes... it has slowly drifted. But vision is still vastly better than before, and still correctable to 20/12 (or equiv in the nearsighted eye... let's see... 3.3/2).
Also, let me point out a few things:
If yours doesn't, go somewhere else!
Re:does anyone know... (Score:2)
I assumed anyone replacing the retina and lens of an eye would also be replacing the ocular fluid and pretty much the rest of the eye, so they could construct it to suit whatever needs. I know it passes UV, because UV can currently damage retinas, indicating it gets through.
Related question: I know there are animals (notably bees) that can see in the ultraviolet -- and also some that can sense polarity, which I think is really cool too! -- but are there animals that have IR-capable vision? (I seem to recall snakes being able to sense IR, but I can't remember if it was via their eyes or some other organ.)
Snakes sense temperature via two pits on either side of their head. I don't believe the pits actually sense IR though, they sense ambient temperature (convective heat, as opposed to radiative heat). Apparently pirhhana and goldfish can also see in infrared...
Kevin Fox
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Re:it's really acuity, not magnification (Score:2)
Sooner or later you are going to hit the resolution limit of the retina. When this happens the only way to improve the image detail is to increase it's size on the retina.
MOVE 'ZIG'.
Re:Whereas programmers. . . (Score:2)
Actually, I work in a disgustingly trendy section of Manhattan, and there are a few modelling agencies in the building. Sometimes run into the models in the elevator; for some reason they act a little chilly around me.
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Re:Some personal observations (Score:2)
Your eyes are probably having to adjust to different optical parameters between the glasses and the contacts, such as a different "natural" focusing distance. The LASIK doctors can actually change this when you get the surgery - and sometimes they speficically make it "close" for one eye and "far" for the other.
I go through the same thing when I haven't worn my contact lenses for a long time and put them in - my eyes are dealing with a different set of focusing parameters. It feels like I'm trying to focus on a bug at the end of my nose (in a different way)
It could also be that you're starting to move your eyeballs. Glasses tend to have very good vision in the center only - with your eyeball pointing straight ahead. Move your eyeball and look off-center through the lens and your vision gets worse. Try it if you have glasses - look at a character on the screen while you move your head up and down and to the sides. It will be better
when you're looking straight on than if you're looking through the edges of your glasses. Spectral abberation also makes things fuzzy. This is where white light gets red "fringes" on one side and blue on the other and the resulting image gets fuzzy. Lots of people with glasses move their heads, not their eyeballs.
With contact lenses, you move your eyeball more. They say that really excellent athletes are good at moving their eyeballs (as well as the rest of their body!) Of course peripheral vision helps too - that's even faster than moving your eyeball.
I've also noticed that glasses make the Image I see smaller. My 21" monitor looks like a 18" monitor with glasses.
Here's where the "software" adaptability comes into play. When I change my glasses for my contact lenses, my flat screen looks concave. My glasses must curve the image for an imperceptible fisheye look which the contact lenses don't have. But my brain adjusted for it and said "THIS is flat".
I'm sure there are other types of distortion that I don't know about - and some of them can be corrected by using your eye muscles in new ways.
Oh yeah, no matter what kind of contacts you have, they cut off oxygen to the eye. I had gas-permeable hard lenses (because of astigmatism) and I could wear them all day. I now wear the toric type soft lenses and my eyes poop out after 8 hours. Glasses are excellent in that respect.
Re:So wear glasses with different lenses, or Lasik (Score:2)
The new disposable contacts are probably my first choice, followed by laser surgery. But, as I said, getting older seems to be helping.
Anyway, it's not a problem right now. I function quite well with things as they are, so I don't see a need to dash out and remedy the problem.
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