German ophthalmic lens company Rodenstock is headquartered in Munich, so it was no surprise that it chose to unveil a major launch for 2025 at Opti. Big Exact Sensitive was described at the show as the latest evolution in products relating to Rodenstock’s overarching Big Vision mission, which involves providing better vision to all spectacle wearers through the use of biometric data.
‘In the human visual system, the eye is the sensor and the brain is the processor,’ said Markus Ilmer, global product director at Rodenstock. ‘After extensive research for this new product, we developed an advanced artificial intelligence algorithm that incorporated additional insights into the brain side of vision that identify an individual’s visual sensitivity.’
Ilmer noted that having fine-tuned its biometric calculations, Rodenstock collaborated with the Munich University of Applied Science and found that lens designs benefitting from the Big Exact Sensitive algorithm were significantly better optimised for individual wearers.
Lenses for people with high visual sensitivity benefited from smaller, more concentrated aberration fields, which provided up to 42% larger aberration-free zones.
Meanwhile, lenses optimised for wearers with low visual sensitivity had more evenly distributed aberration fields, offering up to 30% reduced peripheral aberrations and softer transition zones.
Wearer trials and an eye tracking study further determined the efficacy of the new lenses. On average, the participants experienced 28% better reading flow, which means that the process of reading undisturbed was improved, and there was a 24% improvement in vision flow as the transitions between vision zones in the lenses and varying vision distances were perceived as seamless.
Furthermore, a 35% improvement in visual orientation, from far to near and from central to peripheral vision, was reported.
The UK launch of Big Exact Sensitive will be at 100% Optical on March 1-3, where the company will also be demonstrating its new DNEye Scanner 3.
Gold standard
Another German lens manufacturer, Zeiss, launched its new premium DuraVision Gold UV lens coating. During the research and development process for the product, Zeiss investigated what consumers prioritised when it came to wearing spectacles.
‘We learned that the most important thing is that they have clear and crisp vision in all distances and in different light conditions,’ said Volker Gahr, senior product manager at Zeiss Vision Care.
‘As a company, we can make great lens designs that give clear vision everywhere, but we can further enhance the clarity of lenses with anti-reflection coatings. It was also apparent that it is very important that clear vision can be achieved for a long time and people find it very annoying if their lenses get scratched easily. Every scratch on a lens impacts vision negatively.’
With those findings in mind, Zeiss set out to design and bring to market a new high-performance coating that could offer clear and hassle-free vision together with better cleanability and upgraded scratch resistance.
‘Zeiss DuraVision Gold UV was specifically designed to make the lives of spectacle wearers easier,’ said Gahr. ‘The broadband, anti-reflective coating system was designed in its spectral properties to have a very low reflectance in the blue light spectrum. This leads to a reduced lens yellowness in see-through and an excellent clarity, especially in night-time light conditions.’
DuraVision Gold UV also benefitted from Zeiss CleanGuard, a new molecular formula on the lens surface that significantly increases contact angles of water drops and oil-like substances. This, along with a patented anti-static layer that repels dust and dirt, allowed for smears and smudges on the lens to be removed up to three times faster than older coatings. Significantly, this increase in performance was sufficient to be noticed by 90% of consumers in testing.
In terms of durability, the coating is designed to stay scratch-free for longer due to multiple densely packed metal oxide layers, combined with an extra hard coat. The coating achieved a score of 16 in the Bayer standard test for scratch resistance.
As a final note, Gahr explained there was an aesthetic dimension to DuraVision Gold UV. ‘Classic gold is very popular for frames with consumers, it has a timeless quality as a colour,’ he said. ‘The new coating complements golden metal designs and can also be used on many sun lens tints, as well as on polarised lenses.’
