273 A New Type Contact Lens
273 新型隐形眼镜
A new high-performance contact lens under development at the department for applied phys-ics at the University of Heidelberg will not only correct ordinary vision defects but will enhance normal night vision as much as five times, making people's vision sharper than that of cats.
海德堡大学的应用物理系正在研发一种高性能的隐形眼镜，它不仅可以矫正普通的视力缺陷，而且还可以使夜晚的视力提高5倍，从而使人的视力比猫更敏锐。
Bille and his team work with an optical instrument called an active mirror — a device used in astronomical telescopes to spot newly emerging stars and far distant galaxies. Connected to a wave-front sensor that tracks and measures the course of a laser beam into the eye and back, the aluminum mirror detects the deficiencies of the cornea, the transparent protective layer covering the lens of the human eye. The highly precise data from the two instruments — which, Bille hopes, will one day be found at the opticians all over the world — serve as a basis for the production of completely individualized contact lenses that correct and enhance the wearer's vision.
比尔和他的团队用一种叫做主动反光镜的光学仪器进行研究，这种设备被用在天文望远镜上，用以观察新出现的星星和遥远星系。把这种铝制镜片和波前传感器相连，因为波前传感器可以跟踪并测量射入眼睛及眼球后面的激光光束的运动轨迹，这种镜片就可以探知角膜的缺陷，角膜是覆盖在人眼的晶体的透明偎护层。这两种仪器所测得的精确数据一比尔希望有朝一日全世界各地的眼镜商那里都能见到——可以作为生产完全符合个人特点的隐形眼镜的基础，来矫正和改善戴眼镜者的视力。
By day, Bille's contact lenses will focus rays of light so accurately on the retina that the image of a small leaf or the outline of a far distant tree will be formed with a sharpness that surpasses that of conventional vision aids by almost half a diopter. At night, the lenses have an even greater potential. "Because the new lens — in contrast to the already existing ones — also works when it's dark and the pupil is wide open," says Bille, "lens wearers will be able to identify a face at a distance of 100 meters" — 80 meters farther than they would normally be able to see. In his experiments night vision was enhanced by an even greater factor: in semi-darkness, test subjects could see up to 15 times better than without the lenses.
在白天，比尔的这种隐形眼镜可以非常精确地把光线聚焦到视网膜，从而可以很清晰地形成一片小叶子的图像或者一棵很远的树的轮廓，其清晰度可以比常规的视力辅助设备提高差不多半个屈光度。在夜晚，这种隐形眼镜有着甚至更大的潜能。“因为这片新镜片——与现在的镜片相比——当天黑和人的瞳孔放大的时候，这种镜片依然能发挥作用。”比尔说，“戴这种眼镜的人将能够辨认出100米外的人脸。”——这比通常的情况下能看到的距离远了80米。在他的试验中，在半黑暗的情况下，这种隐形眼镜在提高视力这方面能起到很重要的作用，被试者的视力比不戴眼镜时提高了15倍。
Bille's lenses are expected to reach the market in the year 2000, and one tentative plan is to use the Internet to transmit information on patients' visual defects from the optician to the manufac-turer, who will then produce and mail the contact lenses within a couple of days. The physicist expects the lenses to cost about a dollar a pair, about the same as conventional one-day disposable lenses.
比尔的镜片预计能在2000年进入市场。一个试验性的方案是，利用互联网把病人的视力缺陷资料从眼镜商传送到制造商那儿，制造商再生产出镜片并在两三天内把隐形眼镜邮寄出去。这位物理学家预计，这种镜片每副售价大约1美元，与常规的日抛的一次性镜片价格相当。