Houston Researchers Create Custom Contact Lenses

University of Houston’s College of Optometry Researchers say they have created custom-made contact lenses for people with higher-order aberrated vision. Higher-order aberration vision is a distortion acquired by a wavefront of light when it passes through an eye with irregularities of its refractive components (aqueous humor, crystalline lens, tear film, cornea, and vitreous humor).

While the majority of patients with common vision problems can find glasses or contact lenses fairly easily, the researchers said others who suffer from eye diseases that affect the focus of light have more limited options and might have to learn to live with poor vision.

"The lenses we make are made for you. It’s like putting a fingerprint in the optics. It would not work for another individual with the same disease. It’s a custom fit, a designer lens," said Dr. Jason Marsack, an assistant professor of optometry.

Marsack’s team is supported by a grant of $1.25 million from the National Eye Institute, which researchers said will help translate the results the team has realized in laboratory trials into products that will be available for widespread clinical use. The new lenses as said to not only incorporate sphere and cylinder, which are commonly corrected in glasses and contact lenses, they also correct an entire other family of higher-order aberrations, which are induced by trauma, disease or surgical interventions.

Source: The University of Houston