mobile phone phones get with all sort of software these days , but researchers at MIT have developed one with the power to change more than just a Facebook status .
Using a modest plastic lense that clips to a prison cell phone screen , the software candetermine a someone ’s imagination prescriptionon the spot , make water quick , cheap diagnoses of refractive visual modality error a reality , especially in remote areas of the macrocosm .
The test itself is simple . The patient wait through a lens in the cartridge holder - on gimmick at the cell earphone ’s screen , using the arrow samara on the telephone ’s computer keyboard to move set of parallel green and red lines around until they overlap . Do this eight clip for each center and the software in the phone can set your prescription . The entire process read no more than two proceedings . ( For a very thorough explanation of how the applied science do work , check out the telecasting below . )
This method acting stands in serious line to other methods of testing for imagination errors , like the phoropter – that archaic - looking machine with all the rotating crystalline lens arrays attached to it – or the laser aberrometer , both of which are expensive and command a specialist to manoeuvre . Yet NETRA ( short for Near - Eye Tool for Refractive Assessment ) has achieve accuracy corresponding to a standard aberrometer in initial test . Not to mention it requires no substantial training to mesh , and the lens attachment costs just $ 1 - 2 to make . If manufacture in bulk , NETRA ’s creators think that price might drop to just a few cents per building block .
The researchers will test the gadget in Boston this summertime and hopefully will put it to the tangible test in developing nation sometime shortly thereafter . Considering refractive error are the second - leading cause of blindness affect two billion citizenry worldwide , it should n’t be awfully heavy to come up a market . [ MIT ]
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