I’ve been saying for some time that technology will soon begin to extend ordinary human abilities into the extraordinary. New approaches are on the verge of offering people vision that’s far better than so-called “perfect” 20-20 vision.

Wired News reports that a small company named PixelOptics of Roanoke, Virginia just won a $3.5 million Department of Defense grant to refine its “super-vision” technology. “Theoretically, this should be able to double the distance that a person can see clearly,” says CEO Ron Blum, an ophthalmologist.

As I’ve commented before, every technological advance enables other technological advances. In this case, PixelOptics is building its new technology on the base of something called an aberrometer. This is the same technology behind custom LASIK. It bounces a laser beam off the eyeball, and then produces a computer map of any distortions in the returned light.

PixelOptics burns tiny, light-focusing channels into glasses. Instead of just curving light as ordinary corrective lenses do (thereby correcting for basic problems of astigmatism, nearsightedness or farsightedness), these special channels adjust incoming light to compensate for very small aberrations in the surface of your eye.

To understand this, think of a magnifying glass with a tiny imperfection. If the glass is chipped on the surface, light passing through the tiny chipped area will be distorted differently from light passing through the rest of the glass.

If the magnifying glass were the eye of a nearsighted person, you could design another magnifying glass to completely cancel out its effect. However, the chipped area would still distort light in a small portion of the eye.

Another company, Ophthonix in San Diego, has a similarly conceived lens that improves upon conventional corrective lenses. It reportedly provides better contrast and less blurred vision than traditional lenses. One practical consequence is that drivers spot pedestrians 3/10 of a second faster.

That may not sound like much, but it could be enough that insurance companies would offer reduced premiums to drivers wearing such lenses. Further research will be needed.

Meanwhile, our Transformational Technologies Portfolio holding IntraLase (ILSE: NASDAQ) continues to lead the pack in this cutting edge field. Its unique femtosecond laser allows ophthalmologists performing custom LASIK to offer “all laser” surgery, in which no blade ever touches the eye.

Research is now establishing that this combination procedure typically results in vision better than 20/20, often 20/15 and sometimes even 20/12. It’s also extremely safe.

While some may prefer wearing corrective lenses to having surgery, that’s the standard that the new upstarts are going to have to meet. Meanwhile, all these companies together are helping to raise awareness that 20/20 vision is no longer the gold standard.

As I’ve written before, the market for these lenses and surgeries is not just the visually impaired, but everyone in the whole world. In the next few years, people will come to appreciate the advantages of having “eagle eyes” in everyday affairs as well as professional activities. When that happens, demand is sure to surge.

We’ll be there, smiling, as IntraLase reaps a big chunk of those profits.

To your profitable future,
Jonathan Kolber
January 31, 2007

P.S.: A small, under-the-radar pharmaceuticals pioneer has brought America’s most dreaded disease to its knees… Gains of 30-60 times your money or MORE are all but certain if you’re holding shares when Big Pharma buys it out.

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