Projects and Collaborations

Project RTC-2016-4822-6

Financed by:

Goal: Nano-structured materials of variable refractive index for the optical industry

Description:
Ophthalmic lens design has been exclusive on Big Multinationals for too long. At IOT we believe that this advantage from the leaders is disappearing with the advent of free-form technology. Our believe is that those Rx-Labs, who strive to succeed and grow, will have to innovate and launch a complete range of high-quality products. Free-form machinery puts at the labs disposal the production systems required for achieving the mentioned goal, but just the machinery can't be creative.

At IOT, we wish to be your R&D department, we wish to innovate and develop exclusive designs based on your business strategy, providing your company with an entire product portfolio which will make you gain a better market position. Creating a brand is not easy, but by mixing first-class products with an in-depth knowledge you will have more opportunities to compete in terms of quality with the flagship corporations of the ophthalmic sector.

Our LDS includes a unique range of services which will make you feel as if you have a group of scientists at your lab.

As part of a continuous R&D effort, IOT participates in several research projects including #RTC-2016-4822-6, entitled “Nano-structured materials of variable refractive index for the optical industry”. The objective of this project, done in cooperation with the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, is the development of new optical materials for the ophthalmic industry. IOT was awarded leadership of this project from the Spanish ministry of economy, industry and competitiveness in 2016. The development of new optical materials, coupled with the design capabilities of IOT, could offer in the near future more comprehensive solutions for our customers.

Project CPP2021-008616

Financed by:

Goal: High-speed visual acuity simulation for free-form ophthalmic lens optimization

Description:
It is estimated that 65% of the world's population need optical correction for either ametropia (hyperopia, myopia, and astigmatism) or presbyopia (the latter affecting all the population over 45 years of age). A common feature of those patients before being corrected is that they exhibit poor visual quality at certain working distances. There are multiple ways to quantify this optical quality, being the most widely accepted the so-called visual acuity (VA), which is obtained by eye care professionals (ECPs) by determining the smallest letter a patient can identify on a standardized chart which is presented at some well-stablished distance.

The optical correction chosen for a patient is the one that maximizes the visual acuity. Traditionally, the lenses used for optical correction were sphero-torical lenses and conventional progressive addition lenses. They have few degrees of freedom and only maximize visual acuity for the principal gaze direction. These basic designs underperform for oblique sight directions, where they present oblique power errors which reduce visual acuity.

Only in the most recent years new technologies have appeared that allow full flexibility in the production of correction lenses. These technological breakthroughs have permitted to calculate and produce lenses with optimal visual acuity in all gaze directions. A way to do that is by multi-parametric optimization of a merit function that minimizes oblique power errors.

The objective of this project is the development of a technology to simulate the visual acuity for a certain user looking through an ophthalmic lens for given direction of gaze. There are several models already developed, but most of them are incomplete or way too simplified and none of them considers how the ophthalmic lens and the eye interacts in depth.

During the past few years IOT has developed a very precise model that predicts most of the phenomena covered in the previous literature. However, the main disadvantage of this approach is that it requires a large computing time, which makes it unpractical as a tool in the design and production of correction lenses. The proposed technology will start from the existing model from IOT and explore multiple alternatives to drastically reduce the calculation time, such as using neural networks, machine learning or high-performance computing.

In addition to the previous development, two clinical studies will be conducted. The first will characterize the binocular summation, which is defined as an increase in binocular performance over monocular performance, specifically with respect to visual acuity values. The second study will determine the effect of visual stress on the visual performance. The aim of these studies is to further enrich the existing model.

The final step will use the proposed technology enriched with the clinical trials to design and calculate correction lenses with optimal visual acuity. A theoretical and clinical study will be conducted over these lenses to determine the improvement of the optical performance compared to traditional lenses, as well as an analysis of possible population segmentation in which these lenses give the most improvement.

Project RTC-2016-4822-6

Financed by:

Goal: Nano-structured materials of variable refractive index for the optical industry

Project CPP2021-008616

Financed by:

Goal: High-speed visual acuity simulation for free-form ophthalmic lens optimization

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