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Adaptive Optics May Enable Super-Human Vision 188

Posted by timothy from the but-it-ain't-natural,-honey! dept.
jonwiley writes: "Science Daily reports in this article 'Adapting technology originally developed by astronomers to obtain better images of the heavens, a University of Rochester scientist has developed an optical system that has given research subjects an unprecedented quality of eyesight. The research dramatically improves the sight even of people who have 20/20 vision.'" I knew I should hold off on laser surgery. This and a bionic claw, and superhero fantasies are mine!
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Adaptive Optics May Enable Super-Human Vision More

Adaptive Optics May Enable Super-Human Vision

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  • They state that the meaurements their instruments make are used to configure some sort of lens - a sort of super glasses. But I wonder if in theory they could use the measurements to smooth out all the imperfections, presumably using laser surgery, and permanently give you the super vision.

    I really want to try one of these things. I can remember the first time I put on glasses when I was nine or ten, the difference was like a heat haze in front of my vision had disappeared - or going from VCR to DVD. So you can imagine that trying on adaptive optics is even more astonishing.

    Do these things give you better than 20/20 vision? Is 30/30 going to be a catch phrase of our future :-)

    tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose

  • This and a bionic claw, and superhero fantasies are mine!
    Ah,well I know what you are really up to Rob!You're going to get these implants,become a Borg,and assimilate us into your cult of personality!I knew it!CmdrTaco is part the world's second biggest conspiracy!(We all know that the largest is the GNUist....oops.There Is No Conspiracy -tm-)We must destroy him now before we all become drones under his complete and total control!
    ------------------------
  • Isn't the "Upgrade" topic icon the coolest?

  • Yeah, a beach full of skeletons! That would be something :-)

  • Those Singularity guys are scary! Not the creating-AI part, not the research, just the part where they expect that once the Singularity ('transhuman' intelligence) comes into being, it will be able to synthesize nanotechnology to spread across the globe and wrest control from the hands of humanity.

    Personally, I find it much less spooky to remember that the word 'cyber' comes from a word meaning 'helmsman'. These things are tools; tools we can use to better ourselves. We won't be replaced by the AI, we'll become the AI.

    -Grendel Drago
  • in eyesight perfect is defined as the average.

    By perfect I wasn't referring to the eyesight (where an official { = lie } redefinition of "perfect" might apply) but to lens shape (where the officials haven't trashed the language.)

    Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. B-)

    Now what I want is broad spectrum eyesight..IR, maybe a bit of UV...

    IR is tough, but UV is easy. The retina is sensitive to it, and the cornea and humors pass it. Just remove the lens and substitute something that passes UV (such as glass). If you're so old that your lens has hardened and won't flex well to focus, you won't even miss it.

    This operation was standard for lens disease in the WW II era - with some interesting side effects:

    Some oldsters who had had it done and who knew code were assigned to ships stationed off the French coast. The French Resistance had UV semaphore lights, and would blink messages to the ships. The blinks were invisible to normal eyes, and even if you had instruments you'd have to know where to aim. But those with the operation could just look at the coast, and the light would stand out like a blinking spotlight (which it was).

    The definitive text on ground-based ultraviolet astronomy was written by an astronomer who had had the operation, and for whom UV stars were naded-eye objects. B-)
  • If you run NT and crash, would it be the "Blue 'Balls of Death"?

    "Ever since I switched to UNIX, I don't have any blue balls..."
  • I know there have been several other baseball players (Wade Boggs for example) who had 20/12ish vision, and then worsened to 20/20... he had won a number of batting championships, and then hit .256 (pretty lame). Got contacts to correct him to 20/15 or so, and his average went back up.

    Judging by the number of strikeouts Sosa has compared to his homeruns (2.5:1 one time I checked), his vision isn't all that spectacular, but he swings really hard....
  • Shouldn't that be post-butlerian-jihad? ;)

    JIHAD, BUTLERIAN (see also Great Revolt)--the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as "Thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

    Actually, Dune is on-topic for this article.. Remember the oil lens?:

    OIL LENS: hufuf oil held in static tension by an enclosing force field within a viewing tube as part of a magnifying or other light manipulation system. Because each lens element can be adjusted individually one micron at a time, the oil lens is considered the ultimate in accuracy for manipulating visible light.

    That's what we need to replace our eyes..
  • I'm a sports shooter. Air rifle (10m standing) and .22 longrifle (12m/50m kneeling/lying) are my preferred diciplins, and I've also done some archery for the fun of it. The quality of your vision doesn't have very much to do with hitting the target. Well, if your vision is so bad that you can't see the target, that will be detrimental, ofcourse, but with rifle shooting what you should do is "simply" to line up the three circles (target and sights) so they're perfectly concentric, then pull the trigger carefully to not move the rifle. Actually, what you do is pull the trigger slowly in a fluent motion to prevent trembling, taking away 2/3 of the trigger pressure in 1/3 of the time, and make sure you're on the target when you pull through. Much more a game of concentration, control and timing than of vision. And for archery it's pretty much the same.


    )O(
    the Gods have a sense of humour,
  • It has even been in Slashdot's Segfault.org slashbox:

    id Software Releases IDEYES [segfault.org]

    Keep up the good work, Malda & Co.

  • Interesting. So mankind has been accumulating genetic defects for some time now. Wonder how long it will take until nature catches up on modern healthcare...

    Scary, and not much to do about it either... nothing thats morally acceptable at least. OTOH I guess it will take a few hundred years before any effect is noticeable.

  • what about for military sharpshooters, government spies, etc.?

    If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
  • My friend actually has around 20/8 vision, and it really messes with your depth perception. He had to spend 2 years of his life before kindergarten with specialists doing things like playing catch with foam balls and driving power wheels (yeah, he loved it) without crashing to practice using his depth perception.
  • I thought it was 20 point font at 20 feet.

    This is a perfect example of the danger of assuming that things you make up are correct. Normal is what you get when you test a bunch of people who don't need corrective lenses.
  • actually, there was a study done last year (sorry, no link - don't believe me, I'm making this up!) that concluded that there was a statistical correlation (not necessarily cause/effect) between nearsightedness, and having had a night-light during the first 5 years of life. If you had a night light, you were more likely to need glasses, they said.

    Their hypothesis was that maybe the human eye was not supposed to have stimulation at all druing sleep, during the formative years, that with the eyes closed, and person asleep, enough photons leaked through the eyelids from the night light to affect the development of the eye.

    Sounds interesting, but they'll have a heck of a time coming up with a mechanism to support that, even if the data does.

    If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
  • I thought 20/20 just meant that at a distance of 20 feet, an object looks like it's 20 feet away

    You are literally correct, but your interpretation is slightly off. What it means is that at 20 feet away, an object looks as clear and sharp as it should for 20 feet away - that is as clear and sharp as a normal person would see it. 30/10 would mean that at 30 feet away you could see things as clearly as a normal person could at 10 feet. Certainly a boost.
  • While I think the benefits would certainly outweigh the negative aspects of seeing things much more clearly, I agree that there would be certain drawbacks and it would be nice if you could turn it off. Girls look so much prettier when I take off my glasses.

  • Re:Vision seems harmless enough... but... (Score:3)

    by kevin805 ( 84623 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @10:34PM (#1003929) Homepage
    What if this article detailed a technology that could make people smarter?

    Sign me up!

    At what point is improving ourselves dangerous or unethical?

    Dangerous? When you're in the first trial. Darwin frowns on early adopters.

    Unethical? When I run out of cash and have to steal to feed my bioenhancement habit.

    It's interesting to me that vision enhancement is largely seen as harmless... but how would strength enhancement, or intellect enhancement be seen?

    Many people will object to it. Many coutries will ban it, except for bringing the below average up to average. It will be publicised as the greatest evil since genetically engineered food on the covers of Time and Newsweek. It will be available though, just as megalomaniacs will be having clones made within 5 years.

    It's interesting, though, that the ability to enhance intelligence will have an exponetial factor in its growth. That is, it will be limited by things like skull size, oxygen requirements, signal propogation delays, and so on, but it is also limited by the intelligence of the people who are working on it. This is one of the technologies that can lead to Vinge's Singularity. ( see http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html [pobox.com] )

    I'm really curious what we will look like a thousand years from now. If we do in fact expand outward, it will be the most adventurous types who do so. So we have self-selection to make sure that any colonies on other planets will be much more novelty friendly than earth is. They'll also have more kids, in the long run. And the second generation colonies will be founded by the most adventurous from the first stage colonies. I don't see a universe filled with intellectual, sessile, nearly immortal homebodies. On the contrary, my mental picture is much closer to biker gangs or that alligator guy on discovery channel. Long life an risk aversion are not survival traits.

    Yeah, yeah, I am a little nuts. But in a good way.

  • Lock on to the Researcher (Score:5)

    by goingware ( 85213 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @05:24PM (#1003930) Homepage
    When I was a frosh at CalTech [caltech.edu] back in '82 I heard a lecture by an applied physicist who was doing early adaptive optics research for the very beginning of the Star Wars project.

    His device broke a single laser beam into 20 sub-beams and recombined them into a spot about an inch across that could move anywhere across an 8 inch circle. It was steered using piezoelectric mirrors (each on separate mounts - the whole thing looked like a frankenstein project compared to current technology). The focusing was entirely done by shifting the phase of each sub-beam.

    There was feedback in the system that used varying frequencies to slightly modulate each beam and then combine the phases to get the best focus on a target. The whole thing could work automatically to track a small white target on the end of a stick.

    The researcher inadvertently discovered that if he walked through the beam it would lock onto and track his shiny belt buckle. I saw this demonstrated in an 8mm movie he shot. Considering that this was being developed for tracking nuclear missiles he said he found this a little disturbing.

    Also of note is his early use of color animated computer graphics. He printed out beam fluxes across the region during various simulations as integer digits on line printer paper. Then he assigned his young son to color in all the digits a certain way, so 0 went uncolored while 9 was yellow. Then he used a cable-release on his 8mm camera to animate the calculated simulations of beam tracking.

    They've come a long ways, I see. His crude device probably cost $100,000 or more and I expect took about a year to build.

    Mike

    Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow

  • This was inevitable. (Score:5)

    by CausticPuppy ( 82139 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @05:25PM (#1003931)
    Since video card technology is progressing so quickly, human visual perception will become the system's last bottleneck. The only logical outcome is for people to start overclocking their eyeballs.
  • so you can finaly read the text in Flyspeck 3 at the bottom of a legal document.Undrestanding it is another matter,however.

    ------------------------
  • Soon it will become possible to improve vision, to sharpen hearing, to allow people to live longer , it all might happen within 50 years. But enhancing capabilities of the human mind would be the ultimate and most worrying application of technology.

    At what point will we cease to be human and become something different? The world may very well change in a fundamental way well within our (extra-long?) lifespan.

  • WOWZA! Now I don't have to buy a bigger monitor! Just think, now we don't need bigger monitors! Now I can view my 320x200 pr0n from across the room when my monitor is in 1024x768 and not have to squint, much less wear glasses.

    Ahh, I love progress...
  • Great, just what I need... a new piece of hardware to upgrade every 6 months. I guess it will help the frame-rate flickers I seem to be getting recently (I really need to consider leaving getting more than 2 hours of sleep a night.)

    Did anyone get the fillrate on this sucker? Does it come with hardware T&L?

  • Borg (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    We are the borg! We want our eyepiece back!
  • WHO IN THERE RIGHT MIND WOULD WANT TO SEE BETTER THAN 20/20

    I'd rather turn this question around. Who in their right mind would not want to be able to see better than 20/20 ! I can see no ill effects from this (assuming adaptive optics are safe, which seems reasonable), and many benefits, making travelling easier (can see sign and obstacles from further away), less chance of misinterpreting text, and ease of spotting people, just to name a couple off the top of my head.

    tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose

  • Since they map out tiny retinal inconsistencies with this, howsabout they use that data to resurface the retina or whatnot to correct for the problems. I understand that it wouldn't be as simple as the RK stuff... however, I do remember hearing about some condition (I forget the name... naughty me) where the retina sloughs off after a fashon and can be reattached to the back of the eye with lasers. Sort of like spot welding. I'd figure that that would change the topology of the retina so... why not develop something that would change that topology rather than something that reads and corrects for it? Sort of like the step between supplimentary lenses (e.g. glasses, contact lenses) and RK surgery and its brethren.
  • Many folks believe that nature has already caught up with modern health care:

    Antibiotic resistant bacteria.
    Increased cancer rate.
    Increased instance of allergies and hypersensitivity.

    Etc.

    I have bad eyes. I know I'm supposed to be dead and have no offspring. My wife recently developed a strong reaction to strawberries (which she didn't used to be allergic to) - after she had kids, but I suppose a death due to anaphalactic shock while our kids were so young could affect the survivabiltiy of the offspring; without a mother to pick up after them, how long would they survive in the wild?

    If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!
  • What is this? See Mars from your backyard without
    a telescope?! See the future?

    AO is great (in fact, there is this huge AO laser
    in the office next to mine right now). AO is cool.
    But AO is built for telescopes, and you need a
    calibrating star (or the said laser to mimic a star) so that your piezos can dynamically adjust
    your optics to "de-twinkle" the atmospheric turbulences. How do we use AO to "de-twinkle" our computer screens is beyond me...

    And what's this about seeing Mars from backyard? How the hell are they going to overcome the Rayleigh's Limit of optics? (resolution = lambda/D) That's a HARD physical limit. As long as our eyes are 1 cm across, whatever sh*t you put it in front of our eyes, AO included, is not going to allow us to see the Mars other than a dot!

    I don't even want to talk about the B&L seeing the future thing. U of Rochester has just bombed its reputation. (at least in my books.)

    Rant Over.
  • hell, if insurance companies could prove statistically that having this surgery done improved your risk factor, then you could get a discount. In factmaybe the insurance companies will start paying for this procedure, or insisting on it for people like pilots, truck drivers, etc.

    If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!

  • Haiku (Score:1)

    by 575 ( 195442 )
    Superhuman sight
    Naked eyes, able to read
    Microsoft license
  • I remember the first time I put my new glasses on... Wow! Trees have leaves! Not just a blurry shade of green :)

    For me the kicker was finally understanding the phrase "the man in the moon". That one had puzzled me for years...

  • I see a few mentions of eye surgery. Please don't let /. or newsgroups be your main source of advice in stuff to do with your eyes, consult a number of patients and surgeons, doctors too.

    That aside, FWIW, I have had cataract surgery in both eyes. I have fixed focus but the clarity is little short of a miracle. I know the down side btw.

    My point is that enhancing eyesight with "cool" technology shouldn't be done as some sort of geek fashion statement, because messing with the highest bandwidth input to your brain is -risky-. Please, look after your eyes.

  • I've got 20/15 and 20/17 (left and right eye, respectively). However, I don't think that it offers that much of an advantage over "normal" vision, as most important things are less than a room's length away in the course of a day. I suppose it makes for safer driving, but again, it's the stuff up close that requires the most attention.

    Back in Boy Scouts, I did enjoy being able to identify trees from a distance, because I could see individual leaf shapes before the other guys, but that's of pretty limited usefulness. ("Good Lord! I sure am glad I knew that was a basswood or else I would have been toast!") ;)

    Now, my wish list for vision improvements in the future:

    • Extension of vision into the near infrared or near ultraviolet range
    • Addition of rods for better low-light vision (so I won't be jealous of my dog anymore!)
    • Ability to "manually" focus the eye a bit better for precision focusing or looking at very small things up close
    • A bitchin' set of compound eyes mounted on the sides of my skull for a truly psychadelic experience... ;)

  • You're right, we should stop trying to augment the abilities of our eyes, and while we are at it stop trying to cure blindness. Technology is bad. What if the government healed blind people and then made them secret agents who went around enforcing national security or something? We couldn't have that. Down with technology. Ledskof "The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us will go to the stars."
  • Bionic eyes, what's next? woohoo
  • Dr. Scott MacRae is a serious guy therefore I will go out on a limb and suggest that this stuff is worthy of serious consideration.

    MacRae is at the Casey Eye Institute, and one of the Doc's on the FDA team to research and approve Laser Eye Surgery Machines. His research partner, Dr. Larry Rich is co-editor of the biggest research book on the topic.

    Dr. MacRae did about half of the people I sent to the clinic as a happy camper, happy customer. Though Dr. Rich did my surgery, I've watched Dr. MacRay do several. I'm very pleased and very impressed.

    If you're considering the surgery, you may wish to look at my report on the experience [overbyte.com] from 3 years ago.

  • Dr. Fun (Score:4)

    by Decklin Foster ( 136595 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @05:00PM (#1003949)
    Heh, you mean we might actually see this [unc.edu]? ;-)
  • This has actually been discounted by a couple follow up studies in Nature. (I'd give a link to the abstract which you can read for free, but I couldn't figure out how to deep link into Nature's site.) The scientists involved seem to think that it was hereditary- Myopic parents were more likely to leave a night light on in their children's rooms so that they wouldn't have to fumble around in the dark.

  • Allright.. You propose we stop a potentially very useful technology - because it would screw up sports? You desperately need to get your priorities straight!

    -Jeppe
  • ... I could really enjoy the scenery at the beach. ;-)
  • it;s all very nice and all...
    but, i can't seem to get the link open. 2 bad

  • With simulation of adaptive optics in combination with pupil enlargement you get a picture that gets aliased (like in computer graphics), ie the cones and rods are to large to resolve the image and hence the brain might create an image that is pixelated (or is Brain GTS(tm) equipped with full screen anti-aliasing?).

    I recently read an article where they used the aliasing in a video recording to increase the resolution of the individual frames in the video (Do a search on super resolution to find out more). If this can be done in software I wouldn't be surprised if the human visual system can make use of aliasing in moving scenery as well.

  • My Brother was involved in this... (Score:3)

    by LegacyMan ( 193804 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @05:02PM (#1003955)
    ...actually he still is.

    It is more on the test subject side of it though.

    But still, it is quite exciting. When driving he now sees things before they happen.
  • So now that we can plug directly into the optical nerve, why stop at replacing eyes? I mean wouldn't it be nice to see full spectrum? Infrared? Ultraviolet? Imagine lowlight for night driving and telescopic/microscopic for astronomy/bio class. Possibly a Van Eik (sp?) Monitor for seeing a monitor from far off. Why not have an external jack? It would certainly decrease wearable computer sizes. Imagine Quake? Full Eye View! Nintendo directly into your brain! Why stop there? I mean you could build a pager into your body. Tracking devices. GPS. The possibilities are endless. Please refer to your nearest CyberPunk(tm) manual for details.


    Just Please....Don't run it on WinCE...
    Blue Eye of Death!
  • Anyone remember that supposedly some special contact lenses were able to improve vision in the dark dramatically? This is because in the dark our pupils are bigger so the focusing is not as good, the contact lenses apparently fix that.

    Anyone has links to more info?

    Cheerio,
    Link.

  • The term 20/20 vision simply means that you can see at 20 feet what you would normally be able to see. Super good vision would be 20/60 (I may have the order reversed...) which would mean that at 60 feet you can see what a normal person can at 20 feet. 60/20 vision OTOH would mean that at 20 feet you can see what a normal person can see at 60 feet.

  • There's about 0.00001 m of depth to it. To quote:

    a University of Rochester scientist has developed an optical system that has given research subjects an unprecedented quality of eyesight. It then goes through 16 paragraphs without explaining what this "optical system" is or what it exactly does. Is it contact lenses? Goggles? A new version of lasic surgery? The closest it ever gets is a freakin' blurb about inventing a machine that maps out a persons' eyeball in great detail. Yeah. Woohoo. Yet another example of wonderful net journalism.

  • 20/20 means "Can see at 20 feet as well as a 'normal' person can see at 20 feet." So, 30/30 vision would mean "Can see at 30 feet as well as a 'normal' person can see at 30 feet." i.e.; "normal" vision.

    Someone with better than normal vision has 20/x vision, where x < 20. For example, Chuck Yeager in his prime apparently had 20/10 vision... he could see at 20 feet as well as a 'normal' person can see at 10 feet!

    "Free your mind and your ass will follow"

  • I was talking to an opthamoligist just this weekend about this, and he claimed they were working on incorporating it into laser eye surgery.
  • Just FYI, 30/30 would be the same as 20/20. I think the ratio is "Quality of eyesight that patient experiences at 20 feet" == "Quality of eyesight that people with 'perfect vision' experiences at feet" so 20/120 means the patient sees at 20 feet what someone with "perfect" vision experiences at 120 feet. Therefore 20/10 or 20/5 would be more like "superhuman" ... although I think some people really do have 20/10 (?)
  • that's a really cool concept. i wonder if they will ever get it down to a size where it could be portable, eg in a standard-size pair of glasses.

    'course, it would be even cooler if it could be done with contacts... but that's pretty unlikely.

    it's interesting how it can correct for defocusing (near/far sightedness) with a single deformable mirror... i wonder how they manage that.

    --

  • Does really enjoying Bobby's adventures
    constitute a total break with reality
    or merely a rather pathetic fascination
    regarding a sub-culture within
    a sub-culture?

    Maybe I lack clarity of vision regarding this(?).

  • I wonder if the imperfection on your lens change when your eye refocuses. If that were the case then you would really need to carry around this big bulky thing to constantly correct your vision.

    I assume they were going to take the data from the instrument in order to come up with a funky shaped glasses lens to correct for imperfections in your eye. Well, look at how expensive normal glasses are. Optically your normal eye glasses are pretty simple. They don't even use parabolic lenses but rather spherical ones since they are easier to produce and polish.

    It seems to me that we don't have the technology to produce the odd ball shaped lense to correct for imperfection in your eye. How would you polish and coat such a lense with an antireflective coating? If each lense would need to be custom made for every customer than you can imagine how expensive these would be. Of course no one is going to carry around a computerized adaptive optic all the time.

    My guess is that these will only be used for specific purposes. Maybe they could come up with expensive funky telescopes that let you see far away and correct for your eye sight. I believe adaptive lenses are getting cheaper and cheaper these days.

  • Surgery based on this technology would be a bad idea! Keep in mind that the human body changes over time. This is living tissue, not a machine! Most eyes go from normal or nearsighted (whichever the case may be) in their youth to (slightly) farsighted in their middle age and get worse from there.

    I expect that the slight local aberrations which this adaptive optics technology measures and corrects change even more over time. That would make surgical correction a bad move, as the correction would develop into more aberrations over time.

    Also, current LASIK and other laser surgery techniques are rather crude and can leave you with less than perfect vision. Furthermore, they are known to introduce glare, halos and other gost images of things with very high contrast. i.e. the quality of local visual perfection actually goes down, especially in the periphery. You'd most likely need more adaptive optics after LASIK than before.

    Laser surgery produces scar tissue in an otherwise perfectly clear tissue which had a lot of clean, local structure (neat hexagonal patches, for example). I just can't see why healed, scarred tissue should be superior to what grows naturally, even if imperfectly.

    Finally, adaptive optics improve vision especially in low light situations. LASIK is known to make your eyes worse under these same conditions. Doesn't sound like a good match to me.

    Frankly, I prefer an external device that can be periodically retuned to perfectly (or as closely as can be, at least) match the current state of my eyes.

    Check the I Know Why Refractive Surgeons Wear Glasses [ucsd.edu] site for more details on laser eye surgery.

  • His device broke a single laser beam into 20 sub-beams and recombined them into a spot about an inch across that could move anywhere across an 8 inch circle.

    Sounds an awful like a description of the SuperTurbolaser on the Death star... *grin* Star Wars technology inspired by Star Wars... Gotta love it.
    --Fesh

  • Re:Could there be surgery based on the measurement (Score:3)

    by eellis ( 112890 ) on Wednesday June 14, 2000 @12:40AM (#1003968)
    They state that the meaurements their instruments make are used to configure some sort of lens - a sort of super glasses.

    I'd be very surprised if it was a lens and not a mirror. I did my PhD in making mirrors [ic.ac.uk] for adaptive optics - I've met the group from Rochester. Almost all adaptive elements (currently) are reflective - although LCD elements (used in phase rather than amplitude mode) could potentially be used in transmission.

    But I wonder if in theory they could use the measurements to smooth out all the imperfections, presumably using laser surgery, and permanently give you the super vision.

    Yes, they absolutely could. A guy i shared an office with during my PhD was doing exactly these types of measurements (see here [ic.ac.uk]). He measured my eye, and came out with a complete map of the aberrations - i.e. the deviation from the perfect shape. He discovered that my cornea deviates from ideal by less than 0.5 microns - which is pretty good (i'd need about 0.25 dioptre lens to correct this).

    Edric.

  • > so-called "laser eye surgery",

    I don't see wehat's so "so-called" about it. It uses a laser. on the eye. as surgery.

    > which is referred to by its own practicioners as slash and burn

    What does this prove, except that medics have a twisted sense of humour about thier work. But knowing several medics, I knew that already.

    > you really looked into the way they are creating scars on the lens, etc

    That's not what I read.

    > you'd not want that to happen to your eyes

    I did and I don't regret having done it. It's a lot better than specs or contacts.

    Sure next year's model will be better, and sure there's no sense in cutting an eye which has normal vision. But if you are going to do corrective surgery, you might as well do a good job as you can.

    If you've really got some data against it, how about a URL?
  • that makes much more sense.

    If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is!

  • Try looking at something colorful on the edge of your field of vision next time you are outside at night. You'll see you won't be able to distinguish color as well.

    Try looking at anything at night for that matter. The rods handle most of your vision at night (scotopic vision), the cones most of your vision in daylight (photopic vision). Besides, colour perception involves much more than just the retina. For instance, if you know that trees are dark green, you can easily perceive them as slightly greenish at night. Otherwise I liked your post.

    Anonymity fears no Karma.

    Maybe it should. Nowadays, if you get to many negative moderations your IP will be temporarily blocked...

  • While I think better near/far vision would be wonderful, there's still some underlying problems with the ways our eyes are designed.

    This mainly has to do with the way rods and cones are arranged in our eyes. Rods and cones being the receptors of light inside your eye. Rods are extremely sensitive to light and dark, and can discern changes in luminosity levels quite easily. Their only drawback is that all they can tell apart is light or dark. If your eye was only rods you'd see in black and white. Cones, on the other hand, can see in color, or rather, can help you see in color. That's because there's three different kinds of cones; each one detects either red, green, or blue light (the RGB spectrum). They, however, are not as sensitive to changes in the level of light as the rods are.

    Furthermore, a special problem is created the way these receptors are arranged inside your eye. Rods can be found all over your retina, while cones are found mostly in the middle of it. This causes two things: First off, your eye's 'resolution' so to speak, is higher in the middle. Secondly, you can distinguish color better when the object in question is in the middle of your field of view. This is not to say that normal vision has a center circle of color surrounded by black and white.

    (Well, if your vision is like this, I would consult a professional.)

    Rather, in instances where the level of light is too low (i.e. near the cone's threshold between 'seeing' and 'not-seeing' colored light), you may not be able to see color as well. Try looking at something colorful on the edge of your field of vision next time you are outside at night. You'll see you won't be able to distinguish color as well.

    I think any eyesight system should be able to take this into consideration. Until we can either electrically send visual signals directly into the brain, we won't be able to pass this natural barrier. Even if your focus is 20.00/20.00, your vision is not perfect. Now, if someone could make some cone-growing eye drops...

    Disclaimer: I don't work in the field of science, and my memory may not serve me well, so please correct any of my errors.

    Anonymity fears no Karma.

  • Is it contact lenses? Goggles? A new version of lasic surgery?

    The usual set up for adaptive optics is to

    • sense the optical aberrations in the system (in this case your eye - usually it's the atmosphere between your telescope and a star), and then
    • apply the opposite correction to a flexible mirror (or something similar)
    Real adaptive optics corrects for time-varying aberrations (like the stuff that makes stars twinkle) - so a contact-lens type approach wouldn't work for that.

    As far as i'm aware, the most useful application for adaptive optics in the human eye is this: to allow physicians to see your retina in enough detail to be able to resolve individual rod/cone cells.

    If you have 20/20 vision, then there's no point using adaptive optics (except possibly at night - your vision is considerably worse when using the full aperture of your eye). Your vision is fundamentally limited by the spacing of your rods/cones. And nature knows this - the fundamental optical resolution of your eye matches exactly the rod/cone spacing on your retina! Nature knows about the Nyquist frequency.

    As mentioned, at night, the situation is different - the blob of light produced on your retina from a single point (the "point spread function", in optics-speak) is considerably larger than a single photo-receptor cell. So, here there is some scope for adaptive optics to be useful.

    Edric.

  • "but with rifle shooting what you should do is "simply" to line up the three circles (target and sights) so they're perfectly concentric, then pull the trigger carefully to not move the rifle"

    Do you not have to compensate for gravity & wind, or is the sight calibrated for this (or for gravity for a given range, atleast)?
  • The thing is that there is no surgery involved for this - they test your eyes using a laser, and then an optical device that sits on your face configures itself to give you "super-vision". There is no implants etc. involved here.

    tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
  • you are a moron

  • With high-resolution monitors and TrueColor, we were reaching the limits of what the average eye could distinguish. This must make monitor manufacturers pretty happy.

  • Maybe I remember this wrong (my eyes are fine so I don't really need to know at this point in my life) (knock on silicon), but I thought 20/20 just meant that at a distance of 20 feet, an object looks like it's 20 feet away -- that is, everything's normal. Thus 30/30 would mean that at 30 feet, things would look 30 feet away -- no interesting change there.

    I think the real boost would be like 30/10 vision, whereby at 30 feet an object seems 10 feet away. Hmm... well, assuming you can do this without screwing up your sense of depth perception that is.

    Really cool would be some sort of "extended focal length" type of vision, simulating the zoom or telescopic nature of a long length camera or telescope lens. At the same time, a wide angle mode might be interesting as well, assumign your peripheral vision cna pick up everything.

    Ahh hell, the best solution would be to just go totally Lee Majors & get bionic eyes, and the rest of your body while you're at it. Then you can fine tune your vision & abilities to any situation :)



  • Already Done, to some extent... (Score:3)

    by Bandwidth_ ( 91035 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @05:47PM (#1003983) Homepage Journal

    It's already been invented.I'm sure most of you have already heard of this but anyway:

    Just get a hold of one of the older Sony Handicams with Nightvision and hack it. There are many sites on the net which will guide you through it, like: This Site [x-raycameras.com]

    I know these aren't exactly glasses, but with a little work...you could make a pretty discrete system.

    -----------------------------

  • Vision seems harmless enough... but... (Score:3)

    by IronChef ( 164482 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @05:50PM (#1003985)

    What if this article detailed a technology that could make people smarter?

    At what point is improving ourselves dangerous or unethical?

    It's interesting to me that vision enhancement is largely seen as harmless... but how would strength enhancement, or intellect enhancement be seen?

    (I am not fishing for a fight, just curious what people think. FWIW I say bring on all the enhancements science can provide. I wear glasses -- I'll take the rest too, thank you.)
  • I disagree. It has been a while since digital TV has been introduced and allthough a lot of people like it, there are also many who do not. Offcourse; basicly its a cheap way of using up all the bandwith you have with a picture which hasn't got the quality off an analog picture but heck; who'll notice? And the good part is you can send even more data with the same amount of bandwith. The only problem you're facing is when the noise kicks in; instead of a 'snowy' picture you'll see square blocks and a still picture.

    But there are also people who can distinguish between analog & digital by looking at the screen. Not staring while searching for a square but just looking at the screen. I guess you can say that these people have good eyesight. I often hear criticism like "no still picture", "ugly quality", etc.

    Now wonder what will happen if -everybody- could see this? And not just seeing it but you could see the difference as easily as you can with an orange and an apple. Heck; it would mean the end for a lot of television brands, tv stations and cable operators. People would massively demand better quality. And who could blaim 'm with an eyesight like that?

    The same goes for mp3 and 'normal' music. Many people, including me, like the medium. But when I want to listen to some real music at home its either tape or vynil for me. I can hear a difference. And I'm convinced that when they develop the perfect hearing it would decrease the mp3 usage by at least one half.

  • Optics of the human eyes depend on many things:
    • The ability of the lens to focus
    • The opacity of the lens
    • The degree the retina can resolve
    For instance, without my glasses, I have 20/15 near vision because my retina is very sensitive. However, my far vision is 20/200 because my eyeball is football shaped and cannot properly focus.

    All we can do with external optics is improve the ability to focus or magnify an image. The former is done with glasses, but, as mentioned in the article, can be improved up to the point of the retina's ability to resolve an image. The latter will provide super-human vision (microscopic/telscopic) but at the cost of tunnel vision and the loss of overall field of view.

    Now, heat vision and x-ray vision are another matter.....

  • Re:XMen a Reality ? (Score:5)

    by Pig Hogger ( 10379 ) <pig...hogger@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @05:56PM (#1004004) Journal
    BLOCKQUOTE>

    These advancements are truly an amazing thing and I applaud the science behind it. With all technology, however, it has the potential to be abused.

    It's a good thing bow and arrows weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been killed.
    It's a good thing stirrups weren't perfected, otherwise archers would be terribly more deadly whilst on horseback.
    It's a good thing gunpowder wasn't perfected, otherwise extra thousands of people would have been killed in wars.
    It's a good thing steam power wasn't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have lead a dreary existence in factories.
    It's a good thing railroads weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of indians would have had their livelyhood destroyed and land stolen.
    It's a good thing ships weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have drowned at sea.
    It's a good thing aircraft wasn't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been killed in aircrashes.
    It's a good thing airships weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been burned in hydrogen fires.
    It's a good thing automobiles weren't invented, otherwise thousands of people would have been killed and maimed in traffic.
    It's a good thing computers weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have suffered carpal tunnel syndrome.
    It's a good thing space shuttles weren't perfected, otherwise slightly more than half a dozen would have been killed by O-ring failures.
    It's a good thing slashdot wasn't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been died of boredom reading really stupid posts...

    --
    Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]

  • Yes, this is a scenario I think very likely - for at least the first while that adaptive optics are commercially available, they will be a status symbol of sorts, as elective/plastic surgery was in its infancy.

    tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
  • I found this out when I was 12 and had my eye exam results explained. I could read the bottom line of the eye chart without squinting. Turns out 20/20 is the average result for "perfect" vision. It is possible to see better than that naturally. My uncle had 20/15 vision, and I wound up with 20/10 vision. I can make out the leaves of a tree at 1000 yards. And the gent that remarked about better focus bringing better dark vision is right. I was recruited by my ophthalmologist for a study about human vision. It's all related. God gifted me with wonderful eyes, and I sit here staring at a computer screen every day... Ain't life a hoot?
  • Personally, I'm going to hold out until the X-ray surgery becomes available.

    Has anyone thought about the effects that these types of surgeries will have on athletes? Will the Olympic shooting/archery/whatever committees have to ban this type of surgery to keep people equal. Does this mean that a person won't be able to compete if their vision was only corrected to 20/20? This is a whole new can of worms.
  • Well, Brahe did have a silver nose, so if you think about it, he really was a 16th century cyborg and not a mere unmodifed man.
  • The syntax is: xx/yy where xx is always the distance that subject can see at. This is normally 20. yy is what distance the 'Normal' can see the same thing as the subject can see.

    Examples:
    20/20 = Subject can see at 20ft what 'Normal' can see at 20ft. (Normal vision)
    20/15 = (Me before chemical burns on cornea) Subject can see at 20ft what 'Normal' can see at only 15ft. (Better than normal)
    20/400+ = (Me after chemical burns on cornea) Subject can see at 20ft what 'Normal' can see at 400ft.
    20/25 = (Me after cornea damage healed with little scar tissue) Subject can see at 20ft what 'Normal' can see at 25ft.

    I hope this is 'clear'. ;) - Ok, bad pun.
  • I had a problem with making my x-ray specs work.

    This is the solution, I got them to work (beta version of course). I'm spending my day at the mall tommorow.

    I'm now working on adapting the optics to my digital camera, then after that, I will make the modifications to my web cam at the gym.

  • Great icon! (Score:5)

    by hypergeek ( 125182 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @07:26PM (#1004034)
    I nearly spat out my drink laughing when I realized this story was posted under the "Upgrades" icon!

    I'll have to start a metaSlashdot so I can give Slashdot a (+1, Funny)

    This calls for a Haiku:

    I can see much more
    With my bionic peepers
    Voyeurism's fun.

  • Re:Only be accessible by people of power and wealt (Score:3)

    by orpheus ( 14534 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @06:21PM (#1004037)
    Nope... i think people of wealth and power won't have any use for them. Though they may equip others with them.

    First: there's not much advantage. The images will still be projected on the retina, which is composed of discrete sensor cells (rod and cones) of a fixed size, which is reasonably well matched to our current vision. I doubt they could consistently squeeze better than 10% sharper vision out of a pair of normal eyeballs. 'Eagle eye vision' is as much a trained processing capacity in the brain as it is a clear image on the retina.

    Admittedly, one could integrate magnification into the system, but then we hit...

    Second: these aren't contacts we're talking about. They'll be goggles - neither attractive nor useful for daily life. Frankly, IR vision would be more useful, and the (relatively) few peopl who own those look pathetic when they flaunt them.

    (there are people with natural vision 'better than 20/20', and it's generally less useful than being double jointed)

    Third: first application? Military. Count on it. Even the limited security uses will be secondary. Bausch and Lomb would love to land a DoD contract

    Fourth: cultural status symbols in the long term are consistently *useless* things -- long nails, bound feet, whatever -- because the true 'status' consists of being 'important enough' that you don't need to use physical capabilities, and instead employ the capabilities of others.

    'Enhanced capability' status symbols, like SUVs and HUM-Vs are generally faddish, high visibility, but almost invariably never utilized aas capabilities
  • If you run NT and crash, would it be the "Blue 'Balls of Death"?
  • how would strength enhancement, or intellect enhancement be seen?

    Strength enhancement is here today, and most people don't think highly of it. Except those using it.

    Of course, steroids must have slipped your mind. The answer is that it's seen negatively. But it's a more difficult question than most people consider. Your body produces testosterone... creatine occurs in red meat... vitamins are in most healthy food. The the more interesting question is, where are the boundries? What is enhancement?

  • "For years David has been way out in front exploring how we could enhance people's vision beyond what is normally thought of as perfect vision," says Scott MacRae, one of the world's leading cornea specialists and a widely recognized pioneer in refractive surgery.

    I'd just settle for an optometrist who didn't insist on overpowering my vision in both eyes so that I can't focus in the GD'd distance. But of course, "your eyesight is supposed to be between here and here, so you need *these* glasses"... which completely disregards the fact that with less-overpowered glasses, I can take the wings off a gnat with a pistol at 500 yards.

    Simon

  • XMen a Reality ? (Score:4)

    by tealover ( 187148 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @05:09PM (#1004046)
    There are two potentially frightening prospects to these new bio-technological enhancements:

    1)They will probably only be accessible by people of power and wealth.
    2)They will be misused by Gov't

    These advancements are truly an amazing thing and I applaud the science behind it. With all technology, however, it has the potential to be abused.
  • Current laser surgery is pretty crude, though. It's not at all like refiguring a lens. It improves the lens performance at the center of the lens at the expense of introducing aberrations at the edges. In low light situations, it can significantly degrade vision (aside from cases where the surgeon just screws up).

    Since older folks often can only dilate to 4-5mm instead of the 7mm in younger folks, it's often a better proposition for them.

    Frankly, I wouldn't trust any surgeon with this unless I had some kind of severe problem that couldn't be corrected with glasses or contacts.

  • Re:Come on! Get the basics right first... (Score:4)

    by hypergeek ( 125182 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @05:11PM (#1004049)
    "I can take the wings off a gnat with a pistol at 500 yards"

    So can I, mostly because gnats don't carry pistols.

  • I can think of another quote that shows limited forsight:
    no one will ever need more that 640K

    Never ask the question Why? ask Why not?
  • Now maybe I can see my dick or toes before I die...

    Damn you internet job?!@$

    Damn you chinese take out?@!%#!

  • Someone with better than normal vision has 20/x vision, where x

    Exactly right!

    And Ted Williams also had 20/10 -- and allegedly could see well enough to see the seams on a fastball headed his way. That's why he was able to hit the homeruns so well. Does any one know about McGuire and Sosa?

    Back before I retired from the sport of fencing, my optometrist and I would fiddle with my eyeglass prescription until I could get 20/12 or better. It did wonders for my depth perception and sense of distance! Being able to gauge distances of about ten feet accurate to about half an inch made life very frustrating for my opponents (who couldn't *quite* seem to reach me :-).

    META: The Slashdot previewer doesn't seem to be handling nested BLOCKQUOTE/EM constructs correctly anymore. Is this fixable?

  • ...I can take the wings off a gnat with a pistol at 500 yards

    That's nothing
    I can pick the fly shit out of pepper with these here spectacles.

  • vision .plan (Score:3)

    by laborit ( 90558 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @06:29PM (#1004061) Homepage
    This is just a beginning, of course. Next we should work on:

    variable contrast, so that colors and shapes are discernable in low light and bright light can be seen without glare. This is effectively what pupillary dilation and contraction do... glasses could superimpose extra iris that would cover up even more pupil than normal, but boosting incoming photons would be considerably more cumbersome.

    IR/UV vision: This could be achieved with little footprint by coating the glasses with a material that absorbed the desired band and emitted visible light, Of course, you'd have to focus on the glasses, which might be strenuous...

    telescopic vision: Just make the lenses flexable...

    Flicker correction: I've heard some people are bothered by certain monitors, fluorescent lights, or a combination, because the refresh rate causes a subliminally perceptable flicker. Perhaps phosphorescent materials in the glasses could create a "persistence of vision" that would blur out the flashing. There would be a cost in resolution, perhaps, but it would ease a lot of headaches.

  • I'd be all for a technology that could make people smarter. Yeah, so some people wouldn't be completely human anymore, but there would be that many less morons in the world. :)

    Directions: take with one grain of sodium chloride.
    --
    No more e-mail address game - see my user info. Time for revenge.

  • That's what I want to know. Why so many people have poor vision. And apparently an increasing percentage are needing corrective optics.

    Is it just because more people notice that their eyesight sucks due newer requirements in their daily activities?

    Or is it because more and more people especially young children are spending much of their time looking at things just a couple of feet away?

    It's a wonder that while our eyes actually grow and develop, most of us can continue to actually focus on things. But there doesn't seem to be much information on how this works and how to improve things or fix it when it's broken. e.g. are there feedback mechanisms so that as an eyeball grows, the lens grows in various ways so that it can be flatter, and how is that done?

    Cheerio,
    Link.
  • Nice job, guys! Way to pummel their poor server to death!

    Whilst we wait for the /. effect to ebb, this press release might amuse you. It's from a year ago... released by both UC Berkeley [berkeley.edu] and U of Chicago [uchicago.edu] Both the articles are pretty much the same... you needn't hit them both.

    Aparently they're both part of the same program, along with Rochester. Some interesting details, despite being a year old. Talks about forming an artificial star with a laser, too. :-)

  • I have superhuman vision every time I pick up my binoculars. And when I use my telephone, I can hear for miles and miles and miles... :-)

    Sure, if you measure the eye really carefully you can come up with better glasses. But I shiver at the thought of this being used for the so-called "laser eye surgery", which is referred to by its own practicioners as slash and burn. If you really looked into the way they are creating scars on the lens, etc., you'd not want that to happen to your eyes.

    Bruce

  • Actually, the artificial star thing wasn't really as interesting as it looked at first glance. :-)
  • What I meant to say, was that MortimerK's post showed his incredible observational powers... it's almost like he had... bionic vision!

    (Okay, now the thread is officially Kosher)

  • Almost certainly. (Score:3)

    by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @08:39PM (#1004083) Journal
    I wonder if in theory they could use the measurements to smooth out all the imperfections, presumably using laser surgery, and permanently give you the super vision.

    Almost certainly. (At least for one focus distance, and probably near-ideal for most of the range of focus.)

    All the mirror is doing is temporarily removing the eye's deviation from an ideal lens. Laser surgery should be able to permanently remove the imperfections (at least in one layer of the lens system), producing the equivalent of the mirror + eye system without the mirror.

    This would be equivalent to having perfect eyes (or very close) - not the approximation the meat machine (even in its best incarnations) comes with. That would be the best that could be done with an eye that size, made of those materials. You might be able to do slightly better by separately perfecting both the lens and the cornea.

    Now you could probably get better yet by substituting other materials (or a multi-lens mix of them) to get less chromatic abberation, or to focus better over a broader range of distances. And of COURSE you could do better by making the eye bigger. But it is interesting to see that the "stock" eye averages far enough from perfect that a very noticable improvement can be made by reshaping it (or the virtual equivalent).

  • OT-You need superhuman vision to read this article (Score:5)

    by shaggz ( 77983 ) on Tuesday June 13, 2000 @05:22PM (#1004098)
    I find it ironic that an article written about superhuman vision is done in such a small font. Maybe it's my browser though.

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