Eye Implant Illumination Optics With Extended Focus Alignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing devices for supplying energy and communicating with eye implants, particularly those on the retina, face challenges due to the eye's imaging properties, which cause issues with light distribution and alignment, leading to inefficient energy transfer and potential medical complications from conductor loops.
Innovation Solution
A device with illumination optics that uses a scattering effect, such as a diffuser or hologram, to create a spatially extended focus that is robust against eye rotations and pupil size variations, ensuring efficient and homogeneous energy delivery to the implant while maintaining safety limits, and can be designed as a head-mounted or separate device.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Use of energy by moving object
If a focused light beam is used to illuminate the retinal implant, then energy transfer efficiency is improved, but the system becomes sensitive to eye rotations and lateral displacements causing vignetting and loss of illumination
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from a point-like focus (0D) to an extended linear focus (1D) that spans across the pupil. This dimensional change allows the light to maintain illumination on the retinal implant even when the eye rotates or displaces laterally, as the extended focus covers a broader spatial range and compensates for positional variations.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent modifies the spatial parameters of the light focus by using a cylindrical lens to transform a point focus into a line focus. This parameter change in the focal geometry (from point to line) increases the tolerance to eye movements and rotations while maintaining sufficient energy density to illuminate the implant effectively.
2Reliability
If additional conductive loops are inserted into the body for inductive power supply, then power supply stability is improved, but surgical complexity and medical complication risks increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the mechanical/surgical insertion of conductive loops with an optical system using a cylindrical lens to create an extended focus. This substitution eliminates the need for additional surgical implants while achieving reliable power transfer through light-based illumination of the photovoltaic implant.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the power supply function from the traditional inductive method requiring conductive loops and implements it through a simplified optical approach. By removing the conductive loops and using only the cylindrical lens modification, the system achieves power supply stability with reduced surgical complexity.
3Productivity
If light is focused precisely on the implant, then energy delivery efficiency is improved, but lateral displacement of the eye causes the illuminated area to shift and miss parts of the implant
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extends the focal point into a line along the horizontal axis by using a cylindrical lens. This dimensional extension creates an illuminated strip that covers the implant area, ensuring that lateral displacements of the eye do not cause the light to miss the implant, while maintaining sufficient energy concentration for efficient energy delivery.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The solution provides a robust and efficient energy transfer to eye implants, maintaining safety limits and adapting to eye movements, thus improving the reliability and safety of energy supply and communication with eye implants.
Implementation Method 1
illumination optics that uses a scattering effect, such as a diffuser or hologram, to create a spatially extended focus
Implementation Method 2
The power transmitted by the illumination light can thus be used as an energy source if the implant has appropriately sensitive receivers (solar cells)
Data Source
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AI summary
An apparatus for supplying energy to and/or communicating with an eye implant by means of illumination radiation is provided, wherein the apparatus (1) comprises a positioning unit (3), which sets an illumination position of the eye of a user, an optical input interface, by means of which the illumination radiation (10) is suppliable to the apparatus (1), and an illumination optical unit (7), wherein the illumination optical unit (7) focuses the supplied illumination radiation (10) in such a way that a focus (16) with a lateral extent of at least 0.1 mm in air is present and such that, when the eye of the user is in the set illumination position, the illumination radiation (10) enters into the eye (14) as a convergent beam such that the focus (16) lies within the eye (14).