Telescopic contact lenses for image magnification by up to 2.8 times [updated]

The researchers from the University of California San Diego, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland, and the Pacific Science & Engineering Group have reported the new type of telescopic contact lens in Optics Express.

This new proposed model can help people with age-related macular degeneration - a leading cause of blindness in older people - as the telescopic lenses would be able to enhance the images up to 2.8 times although they are only 1.17 mm thick.

The lens is a sort of origami-optics lens. There is a layered structure that will allow the light near the outer edge of the lens to bounce across a series of tiny aluminum mirrors before transmitting it to the back of the retina.
"The magnified optical path incorporates a telescopic arrangement of positive and negative annular concentric reflectors to achieve 2.8x magnification on the eye, while light passing through a central clear aperture provides unmagnified vision," the researchers said.
The lens can be used for normal vision or for telescopic vision. With the help of a pair of 3D glasses that work to switch the polarization of the central part of the lens giving the lens a telescopic power, telescopic sight can be switched ON or OFF, making it a "switchable telescopic contact lens".

Although the idea is great but practically the lenses have some difficulties such as gas-impermeable materials making it unsuitable for long-term usage and sub-par image quality. Therefore, it has not been used on real eyeballs yet.

You can see the efficiency of the lens below;

This work is funded by DARPA and can help in vision enhancement of soldiers.

Source:

Optics Express (PDF) via Extreme Tech via Engadget via CNET

Reference:

"Switchable telescopic contact lens," E. Tremblay et al., Optics Express, Vol. 21, Issue 13, pp. 15980-15986 (2013).