Engineering

Contact lens: You blink and you zoom in

Researchers are in the news this week because of their soft biomimetic lens. Blink twice and you get yourself a closer look at things. Activated soft elastomer works to increase focal length.

Engineering

Glowing contact lens could prevent a leading cause of blindness

Hundreds of millions of people suffer from diabetes worldwide, putting them at risk for a creeping blindness, or diabetic retinopathy, that comes with the disease in its more advanced stages. Existing treatments, though effective, ...

Engineering

3D-printed smart contact lens with navigation function

Dr. Seol Seung-Kwon's Smart 3D Printing Research Team at KERI and Professor Lim-Doo Jeong's team at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) developed core technology for smart contact lenses that can implement ...

Engineering

Researchers report a new way to produce curvy electronics

Contact lenses that can monitor your health as well as correct your eyesight aren't science fiction, but an efficient manufacturing method—finding a way to produce the curved lenses with embedded electronics—has remained ...

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Contact lens

A contact lens (also known simply as a contact) is a corrective, cosmetic, or therapeutic lens usually placed on the cornea of the eye. Modern soft contact lenses were invented by the Czech chemist Otto Wichterle and his assistant Drahoslav Lím, who also invented the first gel used for their production.

Contact lens usually serve the same corrective purpose as glasses, but are lightweight and virtually invisible—many commercial lenses are tinted a faint blue to make them more visible when immersed in cleaning and storage solutions. Some cosmetic lenses are deliberately colored to alter the appearance of the eye.

It has been estimated that 125 million people use contact lenses worldwide (2%), including 28 to 38 million in the United States and 13 million in Japan. The types of lenses used and prescribed vary markedly between countries, with rigid lenses accounting for over 20% of currently-prescribed lenses in Japan, Netherlands and Germany but less than 5% in Scandinavia.

People choose to wear contact lenses for many reasons, often due to their appearance and practicality. When compared to spectacles, contact lenses are less affected by wet weather, do not steam up, and provide a wider field of vision. They are more suitable for a number of sporting activities. Additionally, ophthalmological conditions such as keratoconus and aniseikonia may not be accurately corrected with glasses.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA