EnChroma wearable tech corrects color blindness

Berkeley, CA-EnChroma has designed digital lenses that correct for color blindness.

Designers developed a mathematical model of how the brain processes color and determined how to accomplish the necessary digital spectral processing with a complex coating system. The coating consists of a stack of more than 100 layers of semi-reflective material.

"By controlling the thickness of each layer to nanometer-scale precision, sharp edges can be created in the spectrum where the transmission abruptly changes to pass or block specific wavelengths of light, which is analogous to how a digital electrical signal instantaneously changes between the binary states of 0 and 1," said Andrew W. Schmeder, EnChroma's vice president of technology. "That is what we mean by digital spectral processing: the ability to make a series of precisely designed incisions along the spectrum to enhance primary colors while cutting out the intermediate wavelengths of light that dilute the color signal received by the brain."