Development of 3D-Printed Glasses for Color Vision Deficiency

Abstract

Color vision deficiency (CVD) is a common ocular disorder that hampers patients’ color distinction capabilities, causing difficulties in their daily life routine. Till date, a CVD cure is not developed, and treatment courses, such as gene therapy, are yet to be applied on humans. Hence, patients opt for wearable visual aids such as tinted glasses/contact lenses, which achieve the latter by filtering out problematic wavelengths for blue–yellow (440–500 nm) and red–green (540–580 nm) CVD patients, thus, enabling them to distinguish between the colors. Herein, the development of 3D printed glasses for color blindness management is reported. A commercially available highly transparent resin (>95%) is utilized, and two wavelength filtering dyes, with absorption ranges of 550–580 and 440–510 nm, respectively, are mixed with the resin. The tinted glasses are successfully 3D printed using Masked SLA 3D printer; dyes incorporated within the glasses exhibit high stability over 1-week period. The manufactured glasses successfully block more than 50% of the undesired wavelengths along with showing high transparency (>85%) to the remaining portion of the visible light spectrum. When using the developed glasses, volunteers show substantial improvements in Ishihara test scores, which signify the potential of these glasses as CVD wearables.