Technology

The advantages of the Orthoscopics technique is realised through its proprietary technology. The development was partially funded by Government grants, it uses the idea that using 3 light sources (red, green and blue) where the wavelengths of the sources are precisely matched to the colour responses of the receptors in the eye, the a full colour response of the patient can be stimulated. This process, known as metamerism, allows the Orthoscopics system to simulate the colour for almost any situation - a sunny day, fluorescent lights, colour tints etc. or a any combination of light sources and filters.

Using light sources to create colour is said to be additive; using filters to remove unwanted colour is said to be subtractive. The advantage of using additive colour as the basis of the test instrument comes about when using high saturation colours - for the additive method the brightness remains high, for a subtractive method as the colour becomes more saturated, the brightness drops to low levels. This in turn causes another problem for subtractive systems: the colour response of the eye changes at low light levels making prescribing of high saturation colours impossible.

The design of colour tints to match the colour prescription has been addressed by Orthoscopics. Although these are by nature subtractive, by careful control of the wavelengths that are passed by the tint two important advantages can be realised. Firstly, for a given desired range of colours more light passes to the eye ensuring valid use in a wider range of lighting conditions; secondly, by increasing the suppression of unwanted wavelengths (for those whose need is to reduce stimulation for particular eye receptors), a less dense tint is required, again increasing brightness.

There are several older systems available to opticians. All the studies and papers that have been carried out for these are application to the Orthoscopics products - its just that Orthoscopics offers so much more.