ARVO LIVE: eSight Go: Smart glasses for low vision enhancement

Ophthalmology Times® talked with Roland Mattern, Director of Sales and Marketing for eSight and eSight User Gary Foster at this year's ARVO meeting about eSight Go, the new model of smart glasses for low vision enhancement

Video transcript

Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Roland Mattern:

My name is Roland Mattern, I'm the Director of Sales and Marketing at eSight. We're excited to be at ARVO this year, showing our latest technology.

Our current product is in our booth, but what we're excited about is a product we will be launching at the end of 2023. It is the eSight Go, smart glasses for low vision enhancement, and in essence, the product does a similar functionality as a current product, but it's a new form factor.

So our new device, we've taken the battery and put it around the patient's neck, so drastically reduces the weight of the device, and now you wear our device to stick a pair of glasses. On the bridge of my nose is a camera that picks up the image that the patient can no longer perceive due to their central vision loss.

It runs to a through an algorithm of proprietary software that manipulates the image with contrast, color filters, magnification, and brightness to optimize the image for viewing. It then, projects that manipulate image onto two OLED monitors that are inside the headset, and the wearer uses their peripheral vision, their parafoveal photoreceptors or any receptors that may so function in the central portion of their macula to process the visual stimuli. And as our users describe it to me, when they wear the device, the blind spot simply shrinks away.

We're designed to help individuals with central vision loss with a visual acuity of 20 over 80 up to 20/800. In many cases, we will take patients back to 20/20 functional vision for reading, for activities of daily living, doing everything but driving the life. So many of our users go back to their hobbies of fishing, cycling, golf, playing with their dogs, watching Broadway shows, or any other live event that previously, they could not perceive the visual image. Now, they're back fully immersed in those hobbies.

So, this particular product is still in our r&d phase. We're still working to optimize the software, but we anticipate commercializing this version of the product at the end of 2023.

Gary Foster:

My name is Gary Foster, I have AMD. My acuity is 20 over 400. I've been wearing eSight since 2015. I started with the second generation. And what it has done for me, I've I can read to the bottom of the eye chart. I mean, I find it absolutely incredible. I read 20/20; I'm tested 20/20 when I wear my eSight.

I can do everything I ever did before except drive a car. It put me back to work. I was on disability when I lost my eyesight and wasn't happy. The fact that I could go back to work and be productive meant the world to me, and it's wonderful to see the advantages people get when they get to see again and do things that they couldn't do anymore. Even seeing people's faces and being able to read a book or watch television.

So, the main advantage is that you get to have your life back. I mean, that's the best way I can say it. When I'm walking about my peripheral vision is available to me while I'm wearing the glasses, which makes navigation fairly good. Because I know I'm not going to bump into someone, but I wouldn't know who that person was without the benefit of the eSight.

So, I consider it like reverse bifocals, where I'm walking about, I'm just using my peripheral vision to scan my area, and there's no disorientation or anything. But, if I'm approaching someone I just looked up through the eyewear, and I can see the person very, very clearly. I don't need assistance to navigate through a building, to get the information I need. If I'm going shopping, I can read the labels on the cans and that kind of thing, read the prices. I'm totally independent when I'm wearing eSight.