eyesmart.com.au

Ucansi, an American company based in Israel, has developed an application on Smartphones for treating presbyopia by stimulating the visual cortex. The company claims that their App GlassesOff can help older people shed their reading glasses at least part of the time, and let others read without optical aids for longer than usual. GlassesOff is a non-invasive product helping people suffering from Presbyopia to improve their near vision. Presbyopia, commonly referred to as “aging eye”, is the inevitable condition related to hardening of the crystalline lens inside the eye that affects most people by the age of 40 and practically everyone by the age of 51, making it difficult to see near objects clearly (e.g. reading) without the aid of reading glasses.

Uri Polat of Tel Aviv University and co-founder of Ucansi, developed the software that trains users to detect patterns called Gabor patches (blurry lines created by varying a gray background) and adapt to them. The training purportedly helps users become better at the task, resulting in vision improvements.

Over the last three years, the treatment was tested on more than 100 patients suffering from presbyopia, and the volunteers reportedly were able to read more than two lines further down an optical chart after their training. The research was presented last September at a meeting of the Entertainment Software and Cognitive Neurotherapeutics Society in San Francisco. The application will be available soon at a price of US$95.