Forbes – See Clearly At Any Age With Spiral Contacts

> Read the full article on Forbes

A recent Forbes article highlights an innovative lens design developed by French researchers in collaboration with SPIRAL: the spiral diopter contact lens. Using advanced freeform techniques, this lens spirals one of its optical surfaces to generate optical vortices, which allow independent shaping of focus across multiple zones.

Unlike traditional multifocal or progressive lenses, the spiral diopter can encode several focal lengths within a single pupil, addressing near, distance, astigmatism, or bifocal needs all in one lens. In laboratory tests, the spiral lens outperformed standard trifocal lenses—especially at larger apertures—and maintained multifocal behavior even when the aperture was reduced, a weakness of conventional designs.

The spiral design mimics natural patterns found in the eye and applies a spiral curvature across the optical zone that redistributes focal power more efficiently. As a result, image quality in focal areas is sharper, and performance is more stable across varied lighting conditions and pupil sizes.

Although still in development, early clinical trials are underway for using this lens in the correction of presbyopia, the age-related difficulty focusing on nearby objects. Once mature, this technology could offer more natural and comfortable vision correction without the compromises of traditional solutions.