It’s what most people can expect starting around age 40: Presbyopia, or the inability to read and see up close. What usually follows are endless pairs of reading glasses and stubbornly holding a menu at arm’s length for 40 more years. However, a University of Leeds researcher may have come up with a permanent, glasses-free solution—made from what comprises LCD TVs.
You’d never stop watching TV
The main problem with the aging eye is flexibility and elasticity. “As we get older, the lens in our eye stiffens, when the muscles in the eye contract they can no longer shape the lens to bring close objects into focus,” explained Devesh Mistry, a postgraduate research student in the School of Physics and Astronomy, in a press release.
But he has an interesting solution to this issue: “Using liquid crystals, which we probably know better as the material used in the screens of TVs and smartphones, lenses would adjust and focus automatically, depending on the eye muscles’ movement.”
Using such liquid crystal-based materials, Mistry aims to create a synthetic replacement for weak and diseased eye lenses—such as those affected by cataracts. His goal is to have a prototype by the end of his doctorate, in 2018. Should he accomplish this goal, we could see these lenses being implemented within a decade.
Such a procedure would only require a quick and simple surgery using local anesthesia. Doctors would make an incision in the cornea, and then use ultrasound to disintegrate the old problematic lens. Following that, the liquid crystal lens would be inserted, once again restoring near sight.
“Liquid crystals are a very under-rated phase of matter,” Mistry told The Times. “Everybody’s happy with solids, liquids and gases and the phases of matter, but liquid crystals lie between crystalline solids and liquids. They have an ordered structure like a crystal, but they can also flow like a liquid and respond to stimuli.”
Thanks to Mistry, however, liquid crystals may start getting more recognition of their potential. It’s estimated that the first commercially-available liquid crystal lens will be on sale between six and ten years from now.
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Image credit: Thinkstock
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