Has anyone every tried Izon lenses in their glasses?
If you have, how much did they cost and did they make a difference? Also, can you get them with transitions lenses? Thank you.
2010-03-08T09:12:45Z
Their website says:
While other eyeglasses are made for looking, iZon High Resolution Lenses are the first eyeglass lenses made specifically for seeing – seeing with far more sharpness, contrast and clarity than ever before possible.
http://www.izonlens.com/consumer.php
Doc2010-03-08T09:46:12Z
Favorite Answer
Izon lenses are produced by a company called Ophthonix. They are supposed to largely eliminate higher-order aberrations. These aberrations are a defocus due to the shape of your individual eyes, and are not fully corrected by standard lenses. Some people have a high degree of higher-order aberrations, while some people have next to none.
I tried the Izon machine in my clinic for about 3 months. I have a boatload of higher-order aberrations in my own eyes, so I had some Izon lenses made, with great hopes for crisper vision. They made me a little dizzy at first, but I adapted to them fairly quickly. Unfortunately, I saw no improvement in my acuity, either with the chart or in the real world.
Think of how a ray of light enters the eye: it first hits your tear film, then your cornea, then your aqueous humor, then your crystalline lens, then your vitreous, and finally your retina. That is one ray of light; now consider the same for another ray of light that enters your eye 0.1 mm to the right (or left, or up, or down). This second ray of light follows a different path to get to your retina. There is no guarantee that it will hit the retina in exactly the same spot as the first ray of light, though it is usually pretty close. If it does not hit in the exact same spot, that is called an aberration.
Theoretically, you can make a lens for glasses that corrects up for these individual aberrations at each point across the lens. The only problem is that all of the components of your eye move at the same time when you look up, down, or to the sides, but the lenses in your glasses do not move. So even with individual aberration-free lenses, when you gaze slightly away from central (primary) gaze, the same or worse aberrations come back. They were working on contact lenses that have this technology in them (which do move with the eyes), though I am not sure where that project currently stands.
So, are they worth it? They were not for me, but maybe you will see a significant improvement. They do cost more than standard lenses, in the range of $100-$250 more, depending on the lens type. If you try them, you might want to make sure that they will give you a refund on the lenses if they are not everything you expect.
RE: Has anyone every tried Izon lenses in their glasses? If you have, how much did they cost and did they make a difference? Also, can you get them with transitions lenses? Thank you.