Are You Interested in Changing to High-Definition Lenses?
- Posted on: Dec 15 2018
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What are Digital Eyeglass Lenses?
Although your eyeglasses correct your vision to 20/20, you may still wish your vision were even clearer in certain situations. You may have heard a glasses-wearing friend talking about “digital eyeglasses.” And now you wonder what they are, and should they be on your Christmas list?
Well, these lenses are designed to provide sharper vision in all lighting conditions, plus they reduce glare when driving at night. But they are more expensive, so here’s some information to help you get in the know about these new additions to the eyeglass world. Considering the beauty that surrounds us in Portland, seeing even better could certainly be worth it.
What’s wrong with my normal eyeglasses?
All eyeglasses correct for the person’s predominant vision problem, be it nearsightedness, farsightedness, and/or astigmatism, but you could have other problems still affecting the clarity of your corrected vision. These are known as higher-order aberrations.
Higher-order aberrations are more subtle, complex refractive errors, and the technology behind traditional eyeglasses and contact lenses may not be able to correct for them. These higher-order aberrations can cause difficulty seeing at night, glare, halos, blurring, starburst patterns, or even double vision. In each of us, our eyes have some degree of higher-order aberrations, but often they aren’t enough to cause issues with vision. Abnormal curvature of the cornea and crystalline lens may contribute to the distortion of many higher-order aberrations.
What are high-definition lenses?
You can’t really place the blame on conventional technology used to create the vast majority of eyeglass lenses and contacts. After all, the most recent innovation really was back in the 1980s with the introduction of plastic lenses. Things just haven’t changed that much in a very long time. Conventional lenses provide their optimum clarity through the optical center of the lens. As your eye looks away from the center, the clarity of your vision diminishes. This is more the case with high prescriptions and progressive lenses.
Recent advances in lens manufacturing techniques have made possible new high-definition eyeglass lenses that correct for higher-order aberrations. This allows sharper vision across the lens that has been available before. High-definition lenses are designed to provide sharper vision in all lighting conditions and reduce glare for nighttime driving and other night vision tasks.
Free-form lenses
Free-form lenses are the most popular type of high-definition eyeglass lenses. “Free-form” refers to the advanced manufacturing process that reduces higher-order aberrations such as spherical aberration that occur in traditional eyeglass lenses.
With free-form lenses, the creation of the lenses from the wearer’s eyeglass prescription is optimized with computer-controlled surfacing equipment that is much more precise than conventional milling tools. To show the degree of precision, free-form technology can surface lenses in power increments of 0.01 diopter (D), compared with 0.125 to 0.25 D increments with conventional eyeglass lens tooling.
So, are you interested in changing to high-definition lenses? Virtually anyone who wears eyeglasses is a good candidate for them. Those with higher eyeglass prescriptions are likely to notice a greater difference than those with mild prescriptions. Still, they do cost from 25-30 percent more.
Interested in these lenses? Ask us about them at The Eye Center. Fill out our contact form or call us at (503) 297-4718.
Posted in: Optical Shop
