Xinhua News Agency, Hefei, May 22 (reported by Wu Lan) - Reporters learned from the University of Science and Technology of China on May 22 that the team of Xue Tian and Ma Yuqian from the Department of Life Sciences and Medicine, together with the teams of Gong Xinglong and Wang Sheng from the Department of Modern Mechanics and their collaborators, have developed a magical contact lens that breaks through the limits of human vision.
It is reported that by wearing this contact lens, humans can achieve near-infrared color image vision. On May 22, the research results were published online in the journal "Cell".
In nature, human eyes can only perceive a very small part of the visible light spectrum of the electromagnetic spectrum. In previous studies, the team of Xue Tian and Ma Yuqian, together with collaborators, injected upconversion nanoparticles into the retinas of animals to enable mammals to see near-infrared images without assistance for the first time. However, due to the limitations of intravitreal injection in human applications, how to achieve near-infrared vision through non-invasive methods has become a key challenge for the practical application of this technology.
The researchers found that soft transparent contact lenses made of high polymer materials provide a wearable solution. Therefore, they prepared highly transparent upconversion contact lenses through material screening and series conversion.
The experimental verification showed that mice wearing these contact lenses could distinguish near-infrared light information of different time frequencies and orientations. More importantly, the human volunteers wearing these contact lenses not only could see near-infrared light within a certain intensity range but also accurately identified the time-encoded information of the near-infrared light.
The researchers also developed a wearable frame glasses system equipped with upconversion contact lenses, enabling human volunteers to obtain near-infrared image vision with spatial resolution comparable to visible light, and accurately identify complex near-infrared graphics.
It is reported that this study has achieved passive, wearable human expansion of near-infrared image vision capabilities, allowing humans to perceive the multidimensional information of near-infrared light in terms of time, space, and color. This technology has broad application prospects in the fields of medicine, information processing, and visual assistance in the future. (End of article)
Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7507426929054843442/
Disclaimer: The article expresses the views of the author alone. Please express your opinions in the buttons below [upvote/downvote].