Slashdot Mirror
Adaptive Optics May Enable Super-Human Vision
jonwiley writes: "Science Daily reports in this article 'Adapting technology originally developed by astronomers to obtain better images of the heavens, a University of Rochester scientist has developed an optical system that has given research subjects an unprecedented quality of eyesight. The research dramatically improves the sight even of people who have 20/20 vision.'" I knew I should hold off on laser surgery. This and a bionic claw, and superhero fantasies are mine!
I really want to try one of these things. I can remember the first time I put on glasses when I was nine or ten, the difference was like a heat haze in front of my vision had disappeared - or going from VCR to DVD. So you can imagine that trying on adaptive optics is even more astonishing.
Do these things give you better than 20/20 vision? Is 30/30 going to be a catch phrase of our future :-)
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
in eyesight perfect is defined as the average.
By perfect I wasn't referring to the eyesight (where an official { = lie } redefinition of "perfect" might apply) but to lens shape (where the officials haven't trashed the language.)
Perfection is in the eye of the beholder. B-)
Now what I want is broad spectrum eyesight..IR, maybe a bit of UV...
IR is tough, but UV is easy. The retina is sensitive to it, and the cornea and humors pass it. Just remove the lens and substitute something that passes UV (such as glass). If you're so old that your lens has hardened and won't flex well to focus, you won't even miss it.
This operation was standard for lens disease in the WW II era - with some interesting side effects:
Some oldsters who had had it done and who knew code were assigned to ships stationed off the French coast. The French Resistance had UV semaphore lights, and would blink messages to the ships. The blinks were invisible to normal eyes, and even if you had instruments you'd have to know where to aim. But those with the operation could just look at the coast, and the light would stand out like a blinking spotlight (which it was).
The definitive text on ground-based ultraviolet astronomy was written by an astronomer who had had the operation, and for whom UV stars were naded-eye objects. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I'm a sports shooter. Air rifle (10m standing) and .22 longrifle (12m/50m kneeling/lying) are my preferred diciplins, and I've also done some archery for the fun of it. The quality of your vision doesn't have very much to do with hitting the target. Well, if your vision is so bad that you can't see the target, that will be detrimental, ofcourse, but with rifle shooting what you should do is "simply" to line up the three circles (target and sights) so they're perfectly concentric, then pull the trigger carefully to not move the rifle. Actually, what you do is pull the trigger slowly in a fluent motion to prevent trembling, taking away 2/3 of the trigger pressure in 1/3 of the time, and make sure you're on the target when you pull through. Much more a game of concentration, control and timing than of vision. And for archery it's pretty much the same.
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humour,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
What if this article detailed a technology that could make people smarter?
Sign me up!
At what point is improving ourselves dangerous or unethical?
Dangerous? When you're in the first trial. Darwin frowns on early adopters.
Unethical? When I run out of cash and have to steal to feed my bioenhancement habit.
It's interesting to me that vision enhancement is largely seen as harmless... but how would strength enhancement, or intellect enhancement be seen?
Many people will object to it. Many coutries will ban it, except for bringing the below average up to average. It will be publicised as the greatest evil since genetically engineered food on the covers of Time and Newsweek. It will be available though, just as megalomaniacs will be having clones made within 5 years.
It's interesting, though, that the ability to enhance intelligence will have an exponetial factor in its growth. That is, it will be limited by things like skull size, oxygen requirements, signal propogation delays, and so on, but it is also limited by the intelligence of the people who are working on it. This is one of the technologies that can lead to Vinge's Singularity. ( see http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html )
I'm really curious what we will look like a thousand years from now. If we do in fact expand outward, it will be the most adventurous types who do so. So we have self-selection to make sure that any colonies on other planets will be much more novelty friendly than earth is. They'll also have more kids, in the long run. And the second generation colonies will be founded by the most adventurous from the first stage colonies. I don't see a universe filled with intellectual, sessile, nearly immortal homebodies. On the contrary, my mental picture is much closer to biker gangs or that alligator guy on discovery channel. Long life an risk aversion are not survival traits.
Yeah, yeah, I am a little nuts. But in a good way.
His device broke a single laser beam into 20 sub-beams and recombined them into a spot about an inch across that could move anywhere across an 8 inch circle. It was steered using piezoelectric mirrors (each on separate mounts - the whole thing looked like a frankenstein project compared to current technology). The focusing was entirely done by shifting the phase of each sub-beam.
There was feedback in the system that used varying frequencies to slightly modulate each beam and then combine the phases to get the best focus on a target. The whole thing could work automatically to track a small white target on the end of a stick.
The researcher inadvertently discovered that if he walked through the beam it would lock onto and track his shiny belt buckle. I saw this demonstrated in an 8mm movie he shot. Considering that this was being developed for tracking nuclear missiles he said he found this a little disturbing.
Also of note is his early use of color animated computer graphics. He printed out beam fluxes across the region during various simulations as integer digits on line printer paper. Then he assigned his young son to color in all the digits a certain way, so 0 went uncolored while 9 was yellow. Then he used a cable-release on his 8mm camera to animate the calculated simulations of beam tracking.
They've come a long ways, I see. His crude device probably cost $100,000 or more and I expect took about a year to build.
Mike
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Since video card technology is progressing so quickly, human visual perception will become the system's last bottleneck. The only logical outcome is for people to start overclocking their eyeballs.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
so you can finaly read the text in Flyspeck 3 at the bottom of a legal document.Undrestanding it is another matter,however.
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Thus Spake ComradePenguin
Great, just what I need... a new piece of hardware to upgrade every 6 months. I guess it will help the frame-rate flickers I seem to be getting recently (I really need to consider leaving getting more than 2 hours of sleep a night.)
Did anyone get the fillrate on this sucker? Does it come with hardware T&L?
I'd rather turn this question around. Who in their right mind would not want to be able to see better than 20/20 ! I can see no ill effects from this (assuming adaptive optics are safe, which seems reasonable), and many benefits, making travelling easier (can see sign and obstacles from further away), less chance of misinterpreting text, and ease of spotting people, just to name a couple off the top of my head.
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
Heh, you mean we might actually see this? ;-)
... I could really enjoy the scenery at the beach. ;-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
...actually he still is.
It is more on the test subject side of it though.
But still, it is quite exciting. When driving he now sees things before they happen.
Anyone remember that supposedly some special contact lenses were able to improve vision in the dark dramatically? This is because in the dark our pupils are bigger so the focusing is not as good, the contact lenses apparently fix that.
Anyone has links to more info?
Cheerio,
Link.
20/20 means "Can see at 20 feet as well as a 'normal' person can see at 20 feet." So, 30/30 vision would mean "Can see at 30 feet as well as a 'normal' person can see at 30 feet." i.e.; "normal" vision.
Someone with better than normal vision has 20/x vision, where x < 20. For example, Chuck Yeager in his prime apparently had 20/10 vision... he could see at 20 feet as well as a 'normal' person can see at 10 feet!
"Free your mind and your ass will follow"
I was talking to an opthamoligist just this weekend about this, and he claimed they were working on incorporating it into laser eye surgery.
Just FYI, 30/30 would be the same as 20/20. I think the ratio is "Quality of eyesight that patient experiences at 20 feet" == "Quality of eyesight that people with 'perfect vision' experiences at feet" so 20/120 means the patient sees at 20 feet what someone with "perfect" vision experiences at 120 feet. Therefore 20/10 or 20/5 would be more like "superhuman" ... although I think some people really do have 20/10 (?)
the real at&t mix
'course, it would be even cooler if it could be done with contacts... but that's pretty unlikely.
it's interesting how it can correct for defocusing (near/far sightedness) with a single deformable mirror... i wonder how they manage that.
--
Surgery based on this technology would be a bad idea! Keep in mind that the human body changes over time. This is living tissue, not a machine! Most eyes go from normal or nearsighted (whichever the case may be) in their youth to (slightly) farsighted in their middle age and get worse from there.
I expect that the slight local aberrations which this adaptive optics technology measures and corrects change even more over time. That would make surgical correction a bad move, as the correction would develop into more aberrations over time.
Also, current LASIK and other laser surgery techniques are rather crude and can leave you with less than perfect vision. Furthermore, they are known to introduce glare, halos and other gost images of things with very high contrast. i.e. the quality of local visual perfection actually goes down, especially in the periphery. You'd most likely need more adaptive optics after LASIK than before.
Laser surgery produces scar tissue in an otherwise perfectly clear tissue which had a lot of clean, local structure (neat hexagonal patches, for example). I just can't see why healed, scarred tissue should be superior to what grows naturally, even if imperfectly.
Finally, adaptive optics improve vision especially in low light situations. LASIK is known to make your eyes worse under these same conditions. Doesn't sound like a good match to me.
Frankly, I prefer an external device that can be periodically retuned to perfectly (or as closely as can be, at least) match the current state of my eyes.
Check the I Know Why Refractive Surgeons Wear Glasses site for more details on laser eye surgery.
I'd be very surprised if it was a lens and not a mirror. I did my PhD in making mirrors for adaptive optics - I've met the group from Rochester. Almost all adaptive elements (currently) are reflective - although LCD elements (used in phase rather than amplitude mode) could potentially be used in transmission.
But I wonder if in theory they could use the measurements to smooth out all the imperfections, presumably using laser surgery, and permanently give you the super vision.
Yes, they absolutely could. A guy i shared an office with during my PhD was doing exactly these types of measurements (see here ). He measured my eye, and came out with a complete map of the aberrations - i.e. the deviation from the perfect shape. He discovered that my cornea deviates from ideal by less than 0.5 microns - which is pretty good (i'd need about 0.25 dioptre lens to correct this).
Edric.
> so-called "laser eye surgery",
I don't see wehat's so "so-called" about it. It uses a laser. on the eye. as surgery.
> which is referred to by its own practicioners as slash and burn
What does this prove, except that medics have a twisted sense of humour about thier work. But knowing several medics, I knew that already.
> you really looked into the way they are creating scars on the lens, etc
That's not what I read.
> you'd not want that to happen to your eyes
I did and I don't regret having done it. It's a lot better than specs or contacts.
Sure next year's model will be better, and sure there's no sense in cutting an eye which has normal vision. But if you are going to do corrective surgery, you might as well do a good job as you can.
If you've really got some data against it, how about a URL?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
The thing is that there is no surgery involved for this - they test your eyes using a laser, and then an optical device that sits on your face configures itself to give you "super-vision". There is no implants etc. involved here.
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
I think the real boost would be like 30/10 vision, whereby at 30 feet an object seems 10 feet away. Hmm... well, assuming you can do this without screwing up your sense of depth perception that is.
Really cool would be some sort of "extended focal length" type of vision, simulating the zoom or telescopic nature of a long length camera or telescope lens. At the same time, a wide angle mode might be interesting as well, assumign your peripheral vision cna pick up everything.
Ahh hell, the best solution would be to just go totally Lee Majors & get bionic eyes, and the rest of your body while you're at it. Then you can fine tune your vision & abilities to any situation :)
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
It's already been invented.I'm sure most of you have already heard of this but anyway:
Just get a hold of one of the older Sony Handicams with Nightvision and hack it. There are many sites on the net which will guide you through it, like: This Site
I know these aren't exactly glasses, but with a little work...you could make a pretty discrete system.
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What if this article detailed a technology that could make people smarter?
At what point is improving ourselves dangerous or unethical?
It's interesting to me that vision enhancement is largely seen as harmless... but how would strength enhancement, or intellect enhancement be seen?
(I am not fishing for a fight, just curious what people think. FWIW I say bring on all the enhancements science can provide. I wear glasses -- I'll take the rest too, thank you.)
But there are also people who can distinguish between analog & digital by looking at the screen. Not staring while searching for a square but just looking at the screen. I guess you can say that these people have good eyesight. I often hear criticism like "no still picture", "ugly quality", etc.
Now wonder what will happen if -everybody- could see this? And not just seeing it but you could see the difference as easily as you can with an orange and an apple. Heck; it would mean the end for a lot of television brands, tv stations and cable operators. People would massively demand better quality. And who could blaim 'm with an eyesight like that?
The same goes for mp3 and 'normal' music. Many people, including me, like the medium. But when I want to listen to some real music at home its either tape or vynil for me. I can hear a difference. And I'm convinced that when they develop the perfect hearing it would decrease the mp3 usage by at least one half.
- The ability of the lens to focus
- The opacity of the lens
- The degree the retina can resolve
For instance, without my glasses, I have 20/15 near vision because my retina is very sensitive. However, my far vision is 20/200 because my eyeball is football shaped and cannot properly focus.All we can do with external optics is improve the ability to focus or magnify an image. The former is done with glasses, but, as mentioned in the article, can be improved up to the point of the retina's ability to resolve an image. The latter will provide super-human vision (microscopic/telscopic) but at the cost of tunnel vision and the loss of overall field of view.
Now, heat vision and x-ray vision are another matter.....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
These advancements are truly an amazing thing and I applaud the science behind it. With all technology, however, it has the potential to be abused.
It's a good thing bow and arrows weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been killed.
It's a good thing stirrups weren't perfected, otherwise archers would be terribly more deadly whilst on horseback.
It's a good thing gunpowder wasn't perfected, otherwise extra thousands of people would have been killed in wars.
It's a good thing steam power wasn't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have lead a dreary existence in factories.
It's a good thing railroads weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of indians would have had their livelyhood destroyed and land stolen.
It's a good thing ships weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have drowned at sea.
It's a good thing aircraft wasn't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been killed in aircrashes.
It's a good thing airships weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been burned in hydrogen fires.
It's a good thing automobiles weren't invented, otherwise thousands of people would have been killed and maimed in traffic.
It's a good thing computers weren't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have suffered carpal tunnel syndrome.
It's a good thing space shuttles weren't perfected, otherwise slightly more than half a dozen would have been killed by O-ring failures.
It's a good thing slashdot wasn't perfected, otherwise thousands of people would have been died of boredom reading really stupid posts...
--
Here's my mirror
Yes, this is a scenario I think very likely - for at least the first while that adaptive optics are commercially available, they will be a status symbol of sorts, as elective/plastic surgery was in its infancy.
tangent - art and creation are a higher purpose
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
I found this out when I was 12 and had my eye exam results explained. I could read the bottom line of the eye chart without squinting. Turns out 20/20 is the average result for "perfect" vision. It is possible to see better than that naturally. My uncle had 20/15 vision, and I wound up with 20/10 vision. I can make out the leaves of a tree at 1000 yards. And the gent that remarked about better focus bringing better dark vision is right. I was recruited by my ophthalmologist for a study about human vision. It's all related. God gifted me with wonderful eyes, and I sit here staring at a computer screen every day... Ain't life a hoot?
jX [ Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. - Einstein ]
Personally, I'm going to hold out until the X-ray surgery becomes available.
Has anyone thought about the effects that these types of surgeries will have on athletes? Will the Olympic shooting/archery/whatever committees have to ban this type of surgery to keep people equal. Does this mean that a person won't be able to compete if their vision was only corrected to 20/20? This is a whole new can of worms.
Keeping
Well, Brahe did have a silver nose, so if you think about it, he really was a 16th century cyborg and not a mere unmodifed man.
The syntax is: xx/yy where xx is always the distance that subject can see at. This is normally 20. yy is what distance the 'Normal' can see the same thing as the subject can see.
;) - Ok, bad pun.
Examples:
20/20 = Subject can see at 20ft what 'Normal' can see at 20ft. (Normal vision)
20/15 = (Me before chemical burns on cornea) Subject can see at 20ft what 'Normal' can see at only 15ft. (Better than normal)
20/400+ = (Me after chemical burns on cornea) Subject can see at 20ft what 'Normal' can see at 400ft.
20/25 = (Me after cornea damage healed with little scar tissue) Subject can see at 20ft what 'Normal' can see at 25ft.
I hope this is 'clear'.
This is the solution, I got them to work (beta version of course). I'm spending my day at the mall tommorow.
I'm now working on adapting the optics to my digital camera, then after that, I will make the modifications to my web cam at the gym.
Fight Spammers!
I'll have to start a metaSlashdot so I can give Slashdot a (+1, Funny)
This calls for a Haiku:
I can see much more
With my bionic peepers
Voyeurism's fun.
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
Nope... i think people of wealth and power won't have any use for them. Though they may equip others with them.
First: there's not much advantage. The images will still be projected on the retina, which is composed of discrete sensor cells (rod and cones) of a fixed size, which is reasonably well matched to our current vision. I doubt they could consistently squeeze better than 10% sharper vision out of a pair of normal eyeballs. 'Eagle eye vision' is as much a trained processing capacity in the brain as it is a clear image on the retina.
Admittedly, one could integrate magnification into the system, but then we hit...
Second: these aren't contacts we're talking about. They'll be goggles - neither attractive nor useful for daily life. Frankly, IR vision would be more useful, and the (relatively) few peopl who own those look pathetic when they flaunt them.
(there are people with natural vision 'better than 20/20', and it's generally less useful than being double jointed)
Third: first application? Military. Count on it. Even the limited security uses will be secondary. Bausch and Lomb would love to land a DoD contract
Fourth: cultural status symbols in the long term are consistently *useless* things -- long nails, bound feet, whatever -- because the true 'status' consists of being 'important enough' that you don't need to use physical capabilities, and instead employ the capabilities of others.
'Enhanced capability' status symbols, like SUVs and HUM-Vs are generally faddish, high visibility, but almost invariably never utilized aas capabilities
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
Strength enhancement is here today, and most people don't think highly of it. Except those using it.
Of course, steroids must have slipped your mind. The answer is that it's seen negatively. But it's a more difficult question than most people consider. Your body produces testosterone... creatine occurs in red meat... vitamins are in most healthy food. The the more interesting question is, where are the boundries? What is enhancement?
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
"For years David has been way out in front exploring how we could enhance people's vision beyond what is normally thought of as perfect vision," says Scott MacRae, one of the world's leading cornea specialists and a widely recognized pioneer in refractive surgery.
I'd just settle for an optometrist who didn't insist on overpowering my vision in both eyes so that I can't focus in the GD'd distance. But of course, "your eyesight is supposed to be between here and here, so you need *these* glasses"... which completely disregards the fact that with less-overpowered glasses, I can take the wings off a gnat with a pistol at 500 yards.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
There are two potentially frightening prospects to these new bio-technological enhancements:
1)They will probably only be accessible by people of power and wealth.
2)They will be misused by Gov't
These advancements are truly an amazing thing and I applaud the science behind it. With all technology, however, it has the potential to be abused.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Current laser surgery is pretty crude, though. It's not at all like refiguring a lens. It improves the lens performance at the center of the lens at the expense of introducing aberrations at the edges. In low light situations, it can significantly degrade vision (aside from cases where the surgeon just screws up).
Since older folks often can only dilate to 4-5mm instead of the 7mm in younger folks, it's often a better proposition for them.
Frankly, I wouldn't trust any surgeon with this unless I had some kind of severe problem that couldn't be corrected with glasses or contacts.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I can think of another quote that shows limited forsight:
no one will ever need more that 640K
Never ask the question Why? ask Why not?
Now maybe I can see my dick or toes before I die...
Damn you internet job?!@$
Damn you chinese take out?@!%#!
DontBlow.com is an absolute good.
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
variable contrast, so that colors and shapes are discernable in low light and bright light can be seen without glare. This is effectively what pupillary dilation and contraction do... glasses could superimpose extra iris that would cover up even more pupil than normal, but boosting incoming photons would be considerably more cumbersome.
IR/UV vision: This could be achieved with little footprint by coating the glasses with a material that absorbed the desired band and emitted visible light, Of course, you'd have to focus on the glasses, which might be strenuous...
telescopic vision: Just make the lenses flexable...
Flicker correction: I've heard some people are bothered by certain monitors, fluorescent lights, or a combination, because the refresh rate causes a subliminally perceptable flicker. Perhaps phosphorescent materials in the glasses could create a "persistence of vision" that would blur out the flashing. There would be a cost in resolution, perhaps, but it would ease a lot of headaches.
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Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
That's what I want to know. Why so many people have poor vision. And apparently an increasing percentage are needing corrective optics.
Is it just because more people notice that their eyesight sucks due newer requirements in their daily activities?
Or is it because more and more people especially young children are spending much of their time looking at things just a couple of feet away?
It's a wonder that while our eyes actually grow and develop, most of us can continue to actually focus on things. But there doesn't seem to be much information on how this works and how to improve things or fix it when it's broken. e.g. are there feedback mechanisms so that as an eyeball grows, the lens grows in various ways so that it can be flatter, and how is that done?
Cheerio,
Link.
Whilst we wait for the /. effect to ebb, this press release might amuse you. It's from a year ago... released by both UC Berkeley and U of Chicago Both the articles are pretty much the same... you needn't hit them both.
Aparently they're both part of the same program, along with Rochester. Some interesting details, despite being a year old. Talks about forming an artificial star with a laser, too. :-)
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
Sure, if you measure the eye really carefully you can come up with better glasses. But I shiver at the thought of this being used for the so-called "laser eye surgery", which is referred to by its own practicioners as slash and burn. If you really looked into the way they are creating scars on the lens, etc., you'd not want that to happen to your eyes.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
(Okay, now the thread is officially Kosher)
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
I wonder if in theory they could use the measurements to smooth out all the imperfections, presumably using laser surgery, and permanently give you the super vision.
Almost certainly. (At least for one focus distance, and probably near-ideal for most of the range of focus.)
All the mirror is doing is temporarily removing the eye's deviation from an ideal lens. Laser surgery should be able to permanently remove the imperfections (at least in one layer of the lens system), producing the equivalent of the mirror + eye system without the mirror.
This would be equivalent to having perfect eyes (or very close) - not the approximation the meat machine (even in its best incarnations) comes with. That would be the best that could be done with an eye that size, made of those materials. You might be able to do slightly better by separately perfecting both the lens and the cornea.
Now you could probably get better yet by substituting other materials (or a multi-lens mix of them) to get less chromatic abberation, or to focus better over a broader range of distances. And of COURSE you could do better by making the eye bigger. But it is interesting to see that the "stock" eye averages far enough from perfect that a very noticable improvement can be made by reshaping it (or the virtual equivalent).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I find it ironic that an article written about superhuman vision is done in such a small font. Maybe it's my browser though.