High Definition Lenses
Not all lenses are created equally. Up until the last 5 years, spectacle lenses were created in a one-size-fits-all fashion. All patients with the same refractive error (corrective lens power) were fit with the same lens. This left many people seeing 20/20; but not always feeling that they saw the world crisp and clear all of the time.
Many people have what are termed high-order aberrations that can reduce quality of vision. This is the reason behind the common issues of poor quality vision in low lighting (shaded areas, night, poorly lit rooms) and glare from lights. These aberrations may be due to the optical characteristics of your eyes or can be caused by the optical limitations of conventional eyeglass lenses. Laguna Eyes Optometry can assess your eyes for these aberrations and provide you with the best options for correcting your vision so that you may see the world in “high definition.”
In the digital age of high-definition televisions and phones, lens technology has finally caught up. Advances in eyeglass lens manufacturing have made possible new high-definition eyeglass lenses that correct these aberrations, potentially giving you sharper vision than what is possible with conventional eyewear. These lenses are designed to provide sharper vision in all lighting conditions and reduce glare for nighttime driving and other low light tasks (such as jogging and golfing). They also improve your quality of vision with e-Readers and computerized technology.
The most popular type of high-definition eyeglass lenses are called free-form lenses. The term "free-form" refers to an advanced manufacturing process that reduces higher-order aberrations that occur in eyeglass lenses created with traditional eyeglass lens manufacturing tools and processes.
With free-form lenses (also called digital eyeglass lenses), the optical lab considers factors such as how the lenses are positioned in front of the wearer's eyes when they are in the eyeglass frame, the angle between the eye and the back surface of the lens in different gaze positions, the frame size and the position of the wearer's pupil within the frame outline.
Free-form lenses offer an unprecedented degree of customization and may reduce or eliminate certain higher-order aberrations. These lenses may help reduce aberrations that limit field of view and cause starbursts, halos and comet-shaped distortions of lights at night. The end result is that high-definition lenses may provide sharper image quality, better low-contrast and low-lighting vision, reduced glare sensitivity, and better peripheral vision.
This type of improvement in lens creation improves vision significantly in single vision lenses and has made dramatic improvements in quality of vision with progressive lenses and bifocals.
Wavefront Lenses – iZon High Resolution Lenses
Wavefront lenses are another type of high-definition eyeglass lenses. The first brand of wavefront eyeglass lenses introduced in the United States was iZon High Resolution Lenses, manufactured by Ophthonix, Inc. (Vista, Calif.). A study by the U.S. Navy found that people who wore iZon lenses were able to detect, recognize and react to a pedestrian along the road an average of 20 feet sooner than drivers wearing conventional lenses when driving 55 mph in glare conditions.
Besides improving night vision for driving, iZon lenses also may benefit people who have lingering vision problems following LASIK and other refractive eye surgery, the company says.
Are You a Candidate for High-Definition Lenses?
Virtually anyone who wears eyeglasses is a good candidate for free-form, high-definition lenses, but individuals with higher eyeglass prescriptions may notice greater benefits than people with only mild prescriptions.
