UNIVERSITY OF YAMANASHI, KOFU, JAPAN. The development of the Mono-glass system can replicate natural binocular vision. The human eyes view things at slightly changing angles from one another to produce a pair of nonidentical perspectives which the human brain interpret as a single 3D image.

Around 285 million people all over the world suffer from a form of visual impairment. The human’s depth perception does not function properly without two eyes. Losing one’s sight in a single eye can lead to the inability to judge short distances. This led to a team of researchers to develop an innovative solution that can restore binocular vision.

The existing Mono-glass system’s design version rely on Wrap 920AR augmented reality glasses that is commonly used for Autodesk 3D Max. It acts as artificial eyes that generate images with a pair of integrated cameras. A customized software was developed that process the information that will calculate the relative distance of each object in the field of view. The combined data will generate a single image. The image will be displayed in the patient’s good and functional eyes resulting to close objects appearing in focus while advancing distant objects grow increasingly blurry.

The mono-glass needs to deal with several technological challenges before it gets released. The team must be able to find a more portable solution to its quite heavy external quad-core PC that handles the processing of images. Also, there is a need to replace the stereoscopic cameras with a similar device that is wearable just like in Kinect. In this way, the mono-glass system’s overall visual acuity will be immensely improved.