Optics: eye examining – vision testing and correcting – Eye examining or testing instrument – Eye exercising or training type
Reexamination Certificate
2002-04-16
2004-06-01
Ruhl, Dennis W. (Department: 3737)
Optics: eye examining, vision testing and correcting
Eye examining or testing instrument
Eye exercising or training type
Reexamination Certificate
active
06742892
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to devices and methods for exercising eyes.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Vision is the primary navigational system of a human body, providing 80 to 90% of all information received during a person's lifetime. The proficiency of the vision skills affects every human activity and affects human performance on all levels. However, the human vision system functions in a more and more difficult environment as educational and occupational demands continue to grow exponentially in today's society.
The United States economy, as well as that of many foreign countries, have moved from an industrial era to a service era and has entered the information age. More and more, a worker's performance depends on gathering and internalizing a growing body of information in educational, occupational, and even social surroundings.
The computer has become a principal channel for providing services and information. There is an ongoing and dramatic rise in the number of people who use computers at work, at home after work hours, while shopping, reading the newspaper, and the like. The volume of services and information provided via computers also continues to increase. The explosive growth in the use of computers and other vision-related information-gathering activities dramatically increases demands on the vision system.
The visual system and its primary instrument, the eyes, do not respond well to this increased demand. The eyes are meant to respond effortlessly to images of objects that enter awareness and call for attention. However, it is unlikely that the eyes were designed to be used primarily for reading or working on a computer. Yet, as already discussed above, the educational and occupational requirements lead people to do just that.
As a consequence, modern society suffers from a virtual epidemic of vision problems, especially myopia. Such vision problems, including myopia, can be directly related to the amount of time spent reading or working on a computer. The educational system, with its major focus on visual information transmission and communication, is a major contributor to the epidemic.
The eyes are complex neuro-optical systems of the human body. They locate, track, and focus on objects of interest. Before describing the structure and functioning of the eyes, it is useful to describe certain aspects of inanimate optics and related physical phenomena.
A human eye perceives electromagnetic radiation in a certain narrow range of wavelengths (~400 nm to ~700 nm), which may be referred to as the visible range. For the most part, the light perceived by the eye as images of various objects includes mixtures of light waves with different wavelengths. Thus, white light is a mixture of light waves of essentially all wavelengths in the visible range. The electromagnetic waves with unique wavelengths within the visible range (monochromatic light) are perceived as colors. For example, the monochromatic light with the wavelength of 660 nm is perceived as red and the light with the wavelength of 470 nm as blue. Various combinations of light waves (e.g., additions or subtractions) may also be perceived as colors.
On the basis of human perception of colors, the visible range is often divided into various color sub-ranges. One commonly described classification divides the visible range into violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red color sub-ranges:
Color sub-range
Wavelengths (nm)
Violet
~400-425
Indigo
~425-450
Blue
~450-490
Green
~490-570
Yellow
~570-590
Orange
~590-620
Red
>~620
Another classification divides the visible range into blue (<~490 nm), green-yellow (~490-590 nm), and red (>~590 nm) sub-ranges. It should be noted that the boundaries between the color sub-ranges are approximate and depend on many factors. For additional discussion of human perception of color, see J. Liberman, Light:
Medicine of the Future,
Bear & Co., 1991.
Light interacts with material substances. Thus, light may change direction when passing through material substances, a phenomenon known as refraction. An index of refraction (n) measures the magnitude of refraction for a given substance. The index of refraction of a substance is the ratio of the velocity of light in a vacuum (C) to the velocity (&ugr;
&ngr;
) of the light wave with a particular wavelength (&ngr;) in the substance: n=C/&ugr;
&ngr;
. The velocity of light in a vacuum is constant. However, in material substances, the velocity of light is different for each wavelength &ngr;. Therefore, the index of refraction is different at different wavelengths. For this reason, light waves of different wavelengths (colors) are refracted by different amounts through the same optical element. The index of refraction increases as wavelength decreases, and therefore colors of shorter wavelengths exhibit greater change in direction in material substances than colors of longer wavelengths.
The refraction of light is used in various optical systems, such as prisms, lenses, and the like, to manipulate light in a desired manner. A lens is an optical system bounded by two refracting surfaces having a common axis. Lenses refract and focus light emitted by or reflected from various objects. Each lens has a characteristic focus point and focal length, which are commonly used to describe lenses (FIG.
1
). The focus point is a point at which the lens focuses light from an object located at an infinite distance from the lens.
Referring to
FIG. 1
, F
1
is the focus point of the lens L
1
, and F
2
is the focus point of the lens L
2
. The focal length or focal distance (f) is the distance from the center of the lens to its focus point. In the examples of
FIG. 1
, f
1
is the focal length of the lens L
1
, and f
2
is the focal length of the lens L
2
. The focal length f determines the properties of a lens with respect to focusing of light.
FIG. 2
illustrates how lenses focus light from an object. As seen in
FIG. 2
, the lens L captures light from an object located at a point Q. The light is focused into an image of the captured object at a point Q′. The point Q is known as the object point and the point Q′ as the image point. S denotes the distance from the object point Q to the lens L, and S′ denotes the distance from the lens L to the image point Q′.
For an ideal lens, one expression of the relationship between the focal length f and the distances S and S′ is the thin lens equation: 1/S+1/S′=1/f. If the object point Q is located at an infinite distance from the lens L (i.e., S is infinity), the term 1/s approaches zero and the image distance S′ is equal to the focal length of the lens L. If the object distance S is less than infinity, the distance S′ varies as a function of the distance S. Generally, for a given wavelength, the focal length f is fixed for a given inanimate lens. The term 1/f is also fixed for a given lens. Thus, the term 1/f is a parameter of the functional variation between the terms 1/S and 1/S′ (and therefore the distances S and S′). The term 1/f is known as the focusing power of the lens. The focusing power is measured in diopters, which is a metric unit equal to 1 divided by the focal length of the lens, in meters (1 diopter=1 m
−1
). The shorter the focal length f of the lens, the greater the focusing power 1/f.
If the thin lens equation is applied to two different lenses with different focusing powers, the images of objects located at the same distance S are expected to be formed at different image distances S′. Referring again to
FIG. 1
, the focal length f
2
of the lens L
2
is greater than the focal length f
1
of the lens L
1
, and thus the lens L
2
has more focusing power than the lens L
1
. As seen from
FIG. 1
, the greater the focusing power of the lens, the closer to the lens the captured image is formed.
As explained above, the index of refraction (n) varies with the wavelength, and therefore, for the same lens, the magnitude of refraction is different for
Exercise Your Eyes, LLC
Ruhl Dennis W.
Sanders John R.
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