Mollusk Shells—The Key to a New Age of Eyewear?

“Mollusk shells are tough - they easily withstand most attacks from predators. Yet, the shell of the windowpane oyster is also transparent. This odd combination has caught the attention of biologists for years, but researchers have just uncovered the mystery of their unique structure. This new discovery could signal the arrival of a new age of eyewear,” notes a post on TechTimes. “Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) subjected these mollusk shells to a diamond tip press. They used this tool to create indents in the target and examined the marks using an electron microscope and other instruments.” Read more.

Contact Lenses Deliver Glaucoma Treatment

"For nearly half a century, contact lenses have been proposed as a means of ocular drug delivery that may someday replace eye drops, but achieving controlled drug release has been a significant challenge," according to Select Science. "Researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are one step closer to an eye drop-free reality with the development of a drug-eluting contact lens designed for prolonged delivery of latanoprost, a common drug used for the treatment of glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide." Read more.

Eyes Process Images in 13 Milliseconds

"Computer processing speeds seem to exponentially increase every year. But a new study suggests that the original computer, the human brain, can process images the eyes see for only 13 milliseconds - a speed much faster than previously thought," says a Medical News Today post. "The study, conducted by neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was recently published in the journal Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics. Though previous studies have suggested the fastest speed at which the brain can process images is 100 milliseconds, the researchers from MIT gradually increased speeds until their subjects' answers were no better than chance." Read more.

Hand-Held Scanner to Change Screening? Maybe!

Researchers from MIT and the University of Erlangen and Praevium/Thorlabs developed a portable ophthalmic scanner for used in offices of a primary-care physicians, a pediatricians, or even in the developing world. The researchers essentially shrank a table-top optical coherence tomographer (OCT) with the help of a MEMS mirror. The scanner sends infrared light into the eye and onto the retina. The scanner measures the lights' "echoes," tracking changes in the time delay and magnitude of the returning light echoes. Then it creates a cross-sectional tissue structure image of the retina, resembling ultrasound imaging. To deal with the motion instability of a hand-held device, the instrument takes multiple 3-D images at high speeds, scanning a particular volume of the eye many times but with different scanning directions. By using multiple 3-D images of the same part of the retina, the instrument "in effect" corrects distortions resulting from the movement of the operator. It still needs to be evaluated in a clinical setting. One major problem with the scanner: Cost. Read more.

CLs to Deliver Glaucoma Med

Researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology, Boston Children's Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have moved closer to developing a drug-eluting contact lens designed for prolonged delivery of latanoprost, commonly used to treat glaucoma. Using FDA-approved materials, the researchers created the CLs by encapsulating latanoprost-polymer films in hydrogel. Their findings are described online and will be in the January 2014 printed issue of Biomaterials. Read the NIH abstract. Read a PDF version of the study at Science Direct.

Only a day ago, researchers announced that they had mapped the molecular underpinnings of glaucoma. Read the blog post.

Start-Up Hopes to Make Eye Exams More Accessible

“Somerville startup EyeNetra, which has developed inexpensive eye-testing technology leveraging smartphones, has raised $2 million in new equity funding,” notes the Boston Business Journal. “’We're excited to have raised another round of funding and look forward to continued progress in bringing new access to eyeglasses around the world,’ co-founder and CEO David Schafran wrote in an email.” The device is based on work conducted at MIT. Read more.

Sinha Receives PECASE from the White House

The White House selected Dr. Pawan Sinha to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Dr. Sinah,a professor of vision and computational neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received the award in part for his program, called the Project Prakash. The NEI-supported endeavor gives sight to children in India suffering from treatable blindness such as congenital cataracts. These children are old enough to describe what they see, allowing Dr. Sinha and his colleagues to study visual cognition in terms of learning and recognition. The project provides an opportunity to address important and basic issues of neuroscience. The study's finding also could open up applications in the clinical and artificial-intelligence domains. Dr. Sinha was one of 96 to receive the award, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.