More and more of the technology that we see in the movies is becoming an everyday reality. The contact lens embedded with a tiny LED that can light up when a wireless signal is sent to it is one of these realities. Soon you’ll be able to stream your social media feeds and bring up other holographic images cybernetically.

Immediately, I am thinking that this is something that probably crossed Steve Jobs’ mind – imagine pairing this technology with something like Siri?

According to researchers at the University of Washington and Aalto University in Finland, the computerised contact lens could be used to display all kinds of data in the not too distant future.

The lens is made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – a hard plastic that doesn’t allow airflow to the eye – thus limiting usage to only a few minutes.

It can be powered from about a metre away when outside the eye, but only a few centimetres when the contact was in an actual eye.

So far the lens only controls a single pixel, but the authors say it shows that lenses with multiple pixels are definitely within range.

Basically, scientists implanted a tiny LED with sapphire into the centre of a plastic contact lens. Then, a spherical transmitter was placed around the circumference of the lens, which then connected it with a circuit to the LED.

Using standard remote radio frequency transmission, the scientists could control the pixel.

Problem: the human eye has a minimum focal length of several centimetres – meaning it isn’t able to see anything that close to the retinal surface very clearly.

Solution: scientists created a separate, thinner and flatter lens, called a Fresnel lens, that focuses light, and used it to project the image of the LED display directly onto the retina, making it decipherable.

Researchers then tested this by fitting the lenses into the eyes of anesthetised rabbits.

The bunnies tolerated the lenses well for short periods, and the researchers didn’t see any abrasions, thermal burning or other potential negative effects, but, it wasn’t clear exactly what the rabbits saw.

Babak Amir Parviz, an associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of Washington:

If we can make them as comfortable as normal contact lenses, you don’t feel you’re wearing them.

In a sense, it’s the ultimate electronic gear that is totally unnoticeable.

Either way, this bodes well for potential future testing in humans because a Swiss company, Sensimed, has already developed a product that uses similar technology to monitor pressure inside the eye.

No rabbits were harmed in the testing process.

[Source: BBC]