Near-infrared spatiotemporal color vision enabled by upconversion contact lenses

I got fitted for contact lenses. The “fitting” pair were used to measure and adjust. They didn’t have an actual prescription. However, they gave me super-human magnified vision for anything closer than a foot to my face. It was clearer than anything that could be achieved with lenses&#x2F;magnification outside the eye. It was like having microscopes for eyes.<p>I seriously just wanted to get a pair for fine vision tasks like soldering. It made me wonder what type of other “vision augmentation” things might be doable with existing tech. There’s probably a market for devices like this even for those with normal&#x2F;perfect vision.

Synopsis: Humans cannot perceive infrared light due to the physical thermodynamic properties of photon-detecting opsins. However, the capability to detect invisible multispectral infrared light with the naked eye is highly desirable. Here, we report wearable near-infrared (NIR) upconversion contact lenses (UCLs) with suitable optical properties, hydrophilicity, flexibility, and biocompatibility. Mice with UCLs could recognize NIR temporal and spatial information and make behavioral decisions. Furthermore, human participants wearing UCLs could discriminate NIR information, including temporal coding and spatial images. Notably, we have developed trichromatic UCLs (tUCLs), allowing humans to distinguish multiple spectra of NIR light, which can function as three primary colors, thereby achieving human NIR spatiotemporal color vision. Our research opens up the potential of wearable polymeric materials for non-invasive NIR vision, assisting humans in perceiving and transmitting temporal, spatial, and color dimensions of NIR light.

&gt; Humans cannot perceive infrared light due to the physical thermodynamic properties of photon-detecting opsins.<p>Seeing near-NIR without pointing a laser at your eye is interesting, but &quot;cannot perceive&quot;?<p>It&#x27;s <i>dim</i>, yes. But there are perception reports well beyond 1000 nm (like 1.3 or 1.5 um). People see NIR ophthalmoscopes. I fuzzily recall a DIY attempt to wear a NIR bandpass filter, to make bright day into dark-adapted near-NIR night. And two-photon sensitivity[1] can level off the single-photon sensitivity log curve above 900 nm.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S0042698924000488" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedirect.com&#x2F;science&#x2F;article&#x2F;pii&#x2F;S004269892...</a>

As I expected, it needs additional optics to be useful. Consider a sheet of fluorescent film you put on your eyeball. If there&#x27;s an omnidirectional point source of light, it would excite the whole film virtually uniformly. Hence the upconversion contact lens needs to lie on some sort of a focal plane to be useful.

I&#x27;m reminded of the Radio Shack infrared sensor card I have somewhere.<p>It works like those glow-in-the-dark stickers that you charge up under a light, then take into a dark room to glow.<p>Except the IR card would not glow until hit by infrared, like from your TV remote. Then it would light up red as the &quot;charged up&quot; energy would kick infrared up into the visible spectrum. (or probably vice versa)

If we pass infrared through nonlinear material, will it produce distortion, which in turn will create higher harmonics which will be in the visible spectrum?

&gt; However, the capability to detect invisible multispectral infrared light with the naked eye is highly desirable.<p>What would be some practical (or fun) uses of this?

Infravision! (For you D&amp;D nerds out there.)

resolution is too low for any practical use case another article pointed out that it makes no difference if you have your eyes closed, as these things work behind your eyelids this is long way from bieng able to help you tell if your date is interested or what

.