A golfer who wears progressive lenses looks down to tee off, but his vision is distorted looking through the bottom of the glasses, the area that is used for reading. The same thing can happen to someone wearing progressive lenses as she approaches a stairwell, which could seem blurry through the reading portion at the bottom of the lenses, said Dr. Glenn S. Corbin, an optometrist at Wyomissing Optometric Center. A new technology could change that.
Progressive lenses have the wearer’s distance prescription at the top of the lens and add more magnification toward the bottom of the lens for reading. The new electronically-activated lenses called emPower! are like bifocals when not activated, with areas for distance, or for driving, at the top, and midrange vision, or for using a computer, at the bottom, Corbin said.
But after the wearer taps the glasses’ frame at the temple, the portion of the lenses for midrange vision changes to a prescription for reading by activating a layer of liquid crystals embedded in each lens, Corbin said.
Another feature allows the patient to swipe the frame of the glasses at the temple, which puts the glasses in an automatic mode in which the reading portion becomes activated anytime the wearer tilts his head forward as if to read.
“You can turn off and on the ‘reading’ portion at will,” Corbin said. Orders can’t be placed yet, but the lenses will be available in the next few months.
Wyomissing Optometric Center will be one of the first 10 practices in the Northeast to have the technology, said Rick Supplee, sales manager for PixelOptics, a Roanoke, Va., company that developed the lens technology. Aspex Eyewear made the frames, and Panasonic had a hand in some components, Supplee said.
The advantages of the new lenses include less distortion, especially with peripheral vision, than with progressive lenses and, since the reading portion can be turned off, that patients don’t have to deal with that feature when it isn’t activated, Supplee said.
“People read close-up only about 20 percent of the time, so now they can turn off that function for most of the day when they don’t need it,” Supplee added. “People will do less head-tilting and nose-pointing than with the traditional glasses.”
Also, some people just don’t adapt well to progressive lenses due to problems with peripheral vision and because they have to adjust where their eyes look through the lenses depending on how far away objects are, said Dr. Kerry J. Burrell, an optometrist at Wyomissing Optometric.
Some who wear bifocals just take off their glasses when reading closely, Burrell said. “So now they can remove their glasses without actually removing them,” Burrell said. The glasses can be charged in a few hours or, if the battery is completely run down, in eight hours, Supplee said. A charge lasts two to three days depending on use, and ongoing tests have shown the battery will last at least three years, perhaps longer, he said.
There are 36 styles of frames and colors, he said. The glasses are as durable as any other glasses, he said. “This has never been done before, and it is a game-changer in the lens world,” Supplee said.
While Corbin acknowledged that the new technology won’t be replacing all progressive lenses anytime soon, Burrell noted that the practice already has received several calls about the product after people found the practice’s name at www.empowereyewear.com. The vision system, as Corbin calls it, will retail for about $1,250, which includes the frames, lenses, charger and training to use it.
Contact Jason Brudereck: 610-371-5044 or jbrudereck@readingeagle.com.
News source from Reading Eagle
