Performance of focus-tunable presbyopia correction lenses operated using gaze-tracking and LIDAR.

Abstract

Presbyopia is an age-related loss of accommodation ability of the eye which affects an individual's capacity to focus on closer objects. With the advent of tunable lens technologies, various algorithms have been developed to tune such lenses for presbyopia correction in older populations. In this study, we assessed a gaze and LIDAR-based feedback mechanism with electronically tunable lenses for their use as correction lenses for presbyopia. The tunable lens prototype was evaluated in 15 healthy young participants with their corrected sphero-cylindrical refraction by comparing their performance for a dynamic matching task under two conditions: (1) natural accommodation, and (2) emulating presbyopia using cycloplegic drops to paralyse accommodation while focussing using the developed visual demonstrator prototype. The participants performed the matching task on three screens placed at multiple distances. We have demonstrated that gaze can be used in conjunction with LIDAR to tune the lenses in the wearable visual demonstrator prototype, enabling participants to achieve a fast and accurate response for the matching task.