Scientists develop cellphone app to test eyesight for cheap

Eyeglass prescription costs a lot in my part of the world and so it may elsewhere too, I guess. To make the process cheap and accurate for us all, Ramesh Raskar and his team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have created a smartphone app, which in combination with an inexpensive lens would provide cheap and accurate eyeglass prescriptions to smartphone owners.

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The app to be presented at the upcoming SIGGRAPH 2010 Conference, along with the high res display of the smartphone works as an old analog camera with a manual focus lens requiring the user to bring patterns into focus. After the app, user attaches a short, conical viewfinder to the cellphone which creates series of patterns to be matched by the user sticking the viewfinder to the eye with the help of the buttons on the phone. More clicks for adjustment mean bad eyesight.

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Dubbed the Near-Eye Tool for Refractive Assessment (NETRA) this system, has app compatible with iPhones and other similar cellphones with high resolution touchscreen only. The processes for now is as accurate as existing ophthalmalogic machines, but Raskar believes, a few months down the line the NETRA will be more precise than most lenses, let’s hope it does for our eyes cause.

Via: MSNBC/FastCompany