Gadgets & tech: Glasses that cure colorblindness available through Amazon (Video)

While researching how human vision uses color, Mark Changizi and Tim Barber created glasses that allow colorblind individuals to see color!

The neurobiologist Mark Changizi, was researching how humans see the changes in skin color. Things such as the pinkness of blushing, the purple hue of anger, the blueness of a bruise, or the whiteness of paling are due to changes in our blood physiology.

These changes are experienced in all cultures through all skin tones. The ability for humans to detect oxygenation and hemoglobin changes through color evolved so humans could sense when others were scared, unhealthy, or uncomfortable at a glance.

Alas the ability to enhance the detection in changes of color would help enhance the HDTV experience, however that would be incredibly costly. Instead a lens was created to adjust the signal entering human eyes.

O2Amp is the technology that uses filters added to glasses that amplify the oxygenation or deoxygenation of blood. One benefit for healthcare is the enhancement of veins and bruising due to the improvement of the blue-yellow color spectrum in Hemo-Iso lenses.

These changes to the color signal also allow some colorblind humans to experience color. Dr. Daniel Bor is a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex. He is red-green colorblind, and experienced normal color vision wearing the Oxy-Iso lenses enhancing the red-green color spectrum.

Using the three types of lenses, Oxy-Iso, Hemo-Iso, and Oxy-Amp, total color could be enhanced by 90%.

In the near future, sunglass companies may integrate the technology to help identify sunburn on skin; poker players with mirrored glasses may see the flush of someone bluffing; and cosmetics companies may create creams with a boost to the vasculature of our skin.

As for today, commercially available online through Amazon, for about $300, colorblind individuals can see the beauty that normal color vision provides.

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