Spectacle mounted telescopic systems have been prescribed for visual impairment, providing magnified images of objects at farther distances. Typically, bioptic telescopes are mounted toward the top of spectacle lenses or above the frame with the telescope eyepiece positioned above the eye's pupil. This allows the wearer to alternate between the magnified narrow field of view available through the eyepiece and the unmagnified wide view through the carrier lens using head motion. The main obstacles to acceptance are the obvious appearance, limited field of the smaller Galilean telescopes, and weight of the larger Keplerian telescopes. We designed a spectacle-mounted wide-field Keplerian telescope built completely inside the spectacle lens. The design uses embedded mirrors inside the carrier lens for optical pathway folding and conventional lenses or curved mirrors. The small size of the ocular and its position with additional mirror tilt enable the user to view the magnified field simultaneously and above the unmagnified view of the uninterrupted horizontal field that is important for user's safety. This design enables the construction of cosmetic telescopes that can be produced as a commodity lens blank and surfaced to include the patient prescription. These devices may be also of utility in military and civilian use.

Date Published: 13 June 2002
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 4611, Ophthalmic Technologies XII, (13 June 2002); doi: 10.1117/12.470586

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4611:
Ophthalmic Technologies XII
Fabrice Manns; Per G. Soederberg; Arthur Ho, Editor(s)