(Image: Paul Blow)
The lenses in our eyes get stiffer as we age, making it harder to focus on things that are close up. This is why people start to need reading glasses from their 40s onwards. Eventually, nearly everyone will own a pair. But it can be a pain putting on your glasses every time you look at your phone, for instance, assuming you can remember where you put them.
Glasses work by partly focusing light before it hits the eye 鈥� so if you are looking at a screen, why not make it do the focusing for you? A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has shown that plastic screen covers can correct for all kinds of vision problems 鈥� effectively, the screen wears the glasses. But rather than making plastic covers tailored to individuals鈥� eyes, the team want to exploit the ability of . The idea is that instead of providing a 3D image, users could adjust the screen settings to 鈥減re-focus鈥� light as their eyes require.
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Few handheld devices have 3D screens so far, but something similar can be done with software alone. 鈥淲e know how the eye works so we mathematically invert that and compute the image,鈥� says , a computer vision researcher at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, who helped develop the idea. The software distorts images on the screen in such a way that it mimics the effect of a lens bending the light rays before they reach the eye. 鈥淚t looks weird to anyone else but to you it looks sharp,鈥� says Aliaga.
The approach works with both text and images, he says, so with pre-focused screens people would no longer need reading glasses. The Purdue team鈥檚 start-up, called , is developing apps that can modify the text on ebooks, phones and computers. The first product, a free alarm clock phone app, is due for release this year. 鈥淚magine you鈥檙e in bed and you want to see what time it is,鈥� says Aliaga. 鈥淚nstead of searching for your glasses you just pick up your phone.鈥�
Read more: 鈥�Good looking: 6 surprising ways to improve your eyesight鈥�
Leader: 鈥�It鈥檚 time we focused on one of the world鈥檚 biggest health issues鈥�
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淪creens that do the focusing for you鈥�
