Jacob Brewer, an optometric tech in the Patient Care Center, helps clinic optician Nadean Harris use a new VR headset. The clinic recently received the cutting-edge technology to help design custom progressive lenses for patients. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)
Standard progressive lenses can often be cumbersome for patients, as their narrow field of vision and fixed optical zone placements can lead to peripheral distortion, increased head movement and a longer adaptation period compared to custom lenses.
But thanks to a new technology being utilized at the College of Optometry at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, patients now have the opportunity to receive bifocal lenses that are completely personalized.
This summer, UMSL’s College of Optometry and Patient Care Center started working with a proprietary virtual reality headset from Unity Via Elite VR. The breakthrough virtual reality tool allows opticians to design progressive lenses that are fully customized to patients by tracking their specific gaze dynamics. UMSL, which received the technology in early July, became the third optometry school in the U.S. to implement virtual reality technology and the first clinic in the Midwest to adopt the innovative solution, joining a select group of 49 practices nationwide, as of this summer.
The system, which is equipped with advanced eye-tracking and spatial mapping sensors, captures real-time gaze behavior across three distinct visual zones: distance, intermediate and near. While wearing the headset, the patient interacts with immersive visual stimuli, such as a drone or hummingbird, which tracks their natural head and eye movements. The headset captures a highly accurate diagnosis of the patient’s gaze activity, and that data is then translated into a unique surface design. Enhanced technology informs the ideal corridor (where the prescription gradually changes from distance vision to near vision) and creates the correct ergonomic position for the patient.
While wearing the VR headset, each patient interacts with immersive visual stimuli, such as a drone or hummingbird, which tracks their natural head and eye movements.
“This is opening a brand-new technology for creating progressive lenses for glasses,” said Dr. Vinita Henry, associate dean of clinical operations and a clinical professor in the College of Optometry. “It’s a revolutionary new way to customize how these lenses are designed.”
Traditional progressive lenses use pre-determined, standardized designs – the near, intermediate and distance zones are configured in a standard corridor, and the patient must adjust their head and eye movements accordingly in order to see clearly. Lenses created with Unity Via Elite VR, however, are fully tailored to the patient based on their actual visual habits. Since the lenses are created specifically for the individual patient, there’s no need to give their eyes time to adjust to lens corridors, aberrations and visual zones.
“Typically, a bifocal lens is made with everyone in mind, whereas this is made with one person in mind, like a fingerprint,” said Associate Director of Clinical Operations Angelique Forsha. “It looks at how you track things in your vision, and it creates the lens specific to you.”
The College of Optometry’s optometric staff has spent the past few months training with the technology, which is now available to any patient at the Patient Care Center who is being fitted for progressive lenses. Forsha and Henry stress that the technology is also cost-effective, as most insurance plans, including VSP – which produces the headset – cover part of the cost.
