Distortion to correct farsightedness(Hyperopia)

[ECCsimmons]

I was thinking the other day about the idea of the eye using a lens to focus light onto the retina at the correct distance, and was curious whether a digital distortion could ever be used to aid a farsighted person to read something (say this forum post?). The idea being that you could distort the image as if it were going through an optical lens, like your reading glasses, and thus allowing the proper focusing of the image onto the retina for a person given their prescription(this would obviously take many tests to be accurate). I was first thinking of something like a pincushion/barrel distortion, but I highly doubt such a simple distortion would be accurate.

Thing is I have no way to test anything I create because nobody in my immediate vicinity needs reading glasses! and I have no way to relate to what they see without their glasses. It doesn't help that when I try to do research on something like this I get pounded with digital camera information and related software, dealing with lens correction and distortion.


Thx for any info guys!

 

[ProTerran]

I am afraid that distortions has nothing to do with farsightedness. Those are two different types of aberrations, because one is related to field (the image is in focus - i.e. it's sharp) and the other is related to wavefront aberrations (e.g. coma, astigmatism, etc. - the image is sharp only in specific areas). You just can't correct for example spherical aberration (which is causing farsightedness) using distortions. To be able to correct farsightedness you need to use the same type of aberrations but with opposite sign.

 

[HallsofIvy]

"near sightedness" and "farsightedness" both involve eyes focusing light off the retina. (One is before, the other behind, the retina, but I don't recall which.)

In either case, the lens is ground to move the focus to the retina.