A New Portable, Affordable, Functional Magnifier.

Blog vol 5.42. A New Portable, Affordable, Functional Magnifier.

This topic is close to my heart: low vision and current technologies in magnification. In the early 1990’s I was introduced to the first electronic magnifiers with closed circuit televisions (CCTVs). “Low vision” works to help a patient to use whatever vision they have left as best possible. Usually it is a degenerative condition like macular degeneration that reduces the person’s ability to see fine detail or to be able to read. To see best in these circumstances, we use a point on the retina that is unaffected by the disease. Unfortunately, this new point cannot see fine detail, thus magnification comes the rescue making it possible for this new retinal point to see more clearly. 

Some patients’ vision is so bad that they require a lot of magnification. The CCTV is a TV with a camera underneath that captures an image of an open book and projects it onto an enlarged screen — reading made possible! It really is genius, but not portable. We have hand-held magnifiers that use high powered optics to magnify, but as the power increases the magnifier gets smaller and the field of vision more restricted, not very conducive to reading or much else. The advent of electronic devices, like tablets and smart phones, has changed all that.

In the past two decades portable CCTVs have been available. Really nice devices, but still not really portable (more luggable) and quite expensive.

Eschenbach is a company that has done a lot of research and development in magnification. This past fall, Eschenbach introduced the Optaro, a revolutionary way of getting portable and functional magnification. By the use of an illuminated magnifying stand and a simple app on your Iphone/android, you can turn your smartphone into a really handy magnifier. The controls are very similar to other portable CCTVs with photo capture, reverse polarization, a line marker, data transfer, and even voice reading.

So, if you already have a smart phone and need a magnifier, you can use Optaro. It can come with a universal case to fit all phones or one of the 14 different cases for current models. Because your phone is the major processor, you are not paying big dollars for this magnification system.  You can have the best of both worlds: portability, up to 15 X magnification with a larger field of vision, and a decent price. (More information here).

Really helpful.

‘til next week,

the good doctor