Optical Express – online tool shows your poor vision and laser potential

As a spectacle wearer, there’s a range of things which annoy me. Hipsters wearing frames with plain glass lenses, how my glasses steam whenever there’s a change from cold to hot atmosphere, how VR only seems to aimed at those with 20/20 vision and that I am expected to spend a small fortune on corrective surgery without knowing how good the results might be. Optical Express has taken away some of that guesswork.

Thanks to a revolutionary online tool by UK eyecare provider Optical Express you can see the before and after results based on your own prescription.

The idea behind the tool is to help individuals compare their existing natural vision with the eye sight they could achieve through corrective laser eye surgery, but also to allow people to gain an insight into how fun your eyesight without specs or lenses isn’t and why we get peeved when folk that don’t need glasses choose to wear them as a fashion accessory. They wouldn’t wear a brace on their teeth or leg calipers unless they had to would they? Hmmm… praps they would.

This brand new online eye sight simulator tool, designed and created by Optical Express has gone live today, is hoping to help those suffering with poor vision to realise the potential benefits of laser eye surgery.

When you visit the sight site, you’re asked to enter yours or a loved one’s eye prescription details, specifying the Sphere, Cyl and Axis numbers of both the left and right eye.

After uploading their own photo, or selecting a generic picture from the site’s gallery, an image is then generated. The tool simulates how the chosen image would be seen by those with a specific prescription, next to how the same image could look with improved vision. Those who have poor vision and rely on glasses or contact lenses are therefore able to use the simulator to determine how much their sight would improve were they to choose the option of laser eye surgery.

In terms of the design of the simulator, the single page application has been built by the team at Optical Express on .NET 4.5 using C#, with a HTML5/CSS3 front end; using JavaScript to manipulate the page and communicate to the server to apply the blur. It produces a Gaussain kernel based on an individual user’s prescriptions details that have been input.

The kernel concurrently convolves the chosen image based on the generated wave front at the image’s byte level to allow for faster processing. The application is able to automatically decide the kernel size based on the prescription statistics, therefore allowing dynamic amounts of blur. The simulator is also capable of calculating a rotated Gaussian kernel to allow a rotational blur similar to what someone may see if they suffered astigmatism.

The side-by-side images that are produced via the eye sight simulator enable users to essentially see through the eyes of somebody else; gaining insight into the quality of their vision. At the same time, the tool enables those with poor eyesight to see how their vision could improve through laser eye surgery.

Tom Fotheringham, Online Director of opticalexpress.co.uk, made the following comments:

We are really excited to be launching this new eye sight simulator to the general public. First of all, it will help those who know someone suffering from poor vision or an eyesight affliction to further understand just how much of the world their loved one can see naturally. More importantly, the unique technology used within the simulator might just help those who have suffered for years with sight problems to make the decision to invest in surgery to drastically improve their vision.”

Nip over to the simulator and see how the world looks through or your buddy’s eyes.