Bionic lens to restore vision 'available in five years'

By Richard Gray Science Correspondent

A bionic lens that could restore perfect vision to long and short sighted people is five years away, experts claim. How to make 'perfect lenses' unveiled Contact lenses with Terminator vision Bionic eye heralds cyborg revolution Professor James Wolffsohn, from Aston University, has been working with opthology companies to develop flexible artificial lenses that can replace the lens found in the human eye. advertisement As people age, their natural eye lens becomes hard and inflexible, which leads to long-sightedness after the age of about 40-years-old. Currently patients who have cataracts, where the lens in the eye hardens and becomes cloudy, have been offered hard artificial lenses implant since the 1950s, but these only offer a single focal range. Laser surgery, which has become more popular recently, can fix vision in those with short or long sighted problems by altering the shape of the lens, but as the patient gets older they can still develop long-sighted problems as their biological lens ages. Professor Wolffsohn is helping to develop new types of lenses that will offer both long and short focal ranges to patients. He believes that within five to ten years, people will be able to have their vision premanently repaired for less than £1,000 by having one of these flexible lenses implanted in their eye.