Award-winning technology promises earlier diagnosis of macular degeneration and more independence for people with visual impairments.
Navigating the world safely can be a major challenge for people with vision impairments. One award-winning new invention aims to change that, while another aims to diagnose a common eye disease earlier, potentially preventing vision loss in the first place.
The Centre for Eye and Vision Research (CEVR), a Hong Kong-based collaboration between the University of Waterloo and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, recently won gold medals for both the inventions it entered in the Asia Exhibition of Innovations and Inventions Hong Kong.
It’s encouraging for our teams to be recognized in this way and an indication of the maturity of these inventions. This recognition will help accelerate the transition of these projects from research to commercial success.
One of the inventions is the world’s first piece of quantum technology in vision science. It’s a collaboration between quantum optics experts, particularly Drs. Dmitry Pushin, David Cory and Dusan Sarenac of Waterloo, and Waterloo and Hong Kong vision researchers led by Thompson. The underlying technology is a structured light beam that people even at the earliest stages of macular degeneration perceive differently than those without the disease.