British researchers are testing what they are calling "smart glasses" that can help boost the vision of people with near blindness.
Researchers at Oxford University are measuring how well their glasses help improve users awareness of what is around them to help the near-blind navigate around shopping malls and avoid walking into obstacles,
Medical News Today reports.
The hope is the glasses will offer millions of vision-impaired individuals "greater freedom, independence and confidence to get about, and a much improved quality of life," said lead researcher Stephen Hicks, M.D. of Oxford's Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences.
He said the aim is to develop "a product that will look like a regular pair of glasses and cost ... about the same as a smartphone."
The glasses do not replace lost vision, but help wearers make the most of the vision they have by providing additional information about what is front of them, which appears as extra images in the glasses.
The glasses process video footage of what is in front of the wearer, which is captured with a camera mounted on the frame. The frame-mounted camera then sends the raw video footage to a pocket-sized computer that produces enhanced images of nearby objects and sends them to the lenses of the glasses.
The lenses are transparent, but the view is superimposed with the extra images provided by the smart glasses.
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