Inverse-Designed Contact Lenses for Precise Correction of Color Vision Deficiency

Color vision deficiency affects more than 300 million people on the earth. Although no radical cure for the disorder exists now, some specialized color filtering glasses/lenses have been used on color vision deficiency management. However, as color vision deficiency patients usually diversify on their classification and severity, none of current glasses/lenses provides customized correction for various color vision deficiency patients, resulting in undesirable correction effects.<br/>Here we demonstrated the new inverse-designed contact lenses based on nanoparticles for precise correction of color vision deficiency. Firstly, due to the diverse severity of color vision deficiency patients, the wavelength shift (Δλ) of patient’s abnormal photoreceptors was measured to inversely design the best blocking wavelength and blocking rate of our contact lenses. The customized contact lenses were then fabricated by adding silica-coated gold nanoparticles (Au@SiO2 nanoparticles) with appropriate sizes and concentrations to hydrogels or Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Thus, contact lenses obtained a narrow optical absorption band due to the surface plasmonic resonance effect of the added Au@SiO2 nanoparticles. The effect of customized inverse-designed contact lenses was then verified by the simulated color vision and practical human tests.<br/>In summary, inverse-designed contact lenses for color vision deficiency correction were developed and testified in this work. The proposed concept of this work may open avenues to precise color vision correction, optical metamaterials in the wearable device and medical field, thereby addressing the challenge and unmet needs for color vision deficiency management.