Blind woman has better than 20/20 vision after AI surgery

Patient now has 20/16 eyesight after becoming first person in the UK to undergo new Lasik procedure

A legally blind woman now has better than 20/20 vision after becoming the first person in the UK to undergo a new type of AI-powered laser surgery.
Patrícia Gonçalves, 31, from Portugal, was the first patient in the UK to undergo the new Lasik surgery, at a private clinic in London this week.
Ms Gonçalves, who has just completed a master’s degree at the University of Oxford, was legally blind without glasses because of astigmatism and extreme short-sightedness.
The procedure involved scanning her eyes and creating a digital clone of her eyeballs. An artificial intelligence program then experimented on the digital replica to create a bespoke procedure to treat Ms Gonçalves’ failing eyesight. A surgeon then performed the treatment on her.
Her £6,500 procedure on Thursday at Focus Clinics in London by chief eye surgeon Mr David Allamby was a success and she now has 20/16 vision, which is better than 20/20.
20/20 is the benchmark for eyesight and is considered to be a normal visual acuity, which is the ability to see clearly at a distance of 20ft.
“She has worn glasses since five years old, is legally blind without glasses and cannot see the huge ‘E’ letter at the top of the eye test chart,” Mr Allamby told The Telegraph.
“Her best vision pre-op was worse than 20/200 and with glasses was just 20/20. Today, she can see 20/16, so better than 20/20, and has gained one more line down the test chart.”
The “Eyevatar” digital clone technology takes around 10 minutes to scan the eye and gather the data before a computer mimics around 2,000 different laser beams to see what will have the best impact on vision.
It has been used in China and Australia before and is now available in the UK.
“Having astigmatism, I’ve never been able to wear contact lenses comfortably, and my night vision isn’t great. I’m excited to get ray-tracing eye surgery and look forward to experiencing the results first hand,” Ms Gonçalves said ahead of her procedure.
Data from a clinical trial of the technology on 200 people published last year disclosed that every single eye had better than 20/20 vision three months after the surgery.
One in 12 procedures resulted in 20/10 vision, which Mr Allamby says is “the absolute limit for a human eye” and twice as good as 20/20.
The procedure works to minimise what opticians know as the point spread function (PSF), which is the extent to which an image is distorted on the retina compared with reality.
“If you look at a point of light, the image on the retina should also be a point,” Mr Allamby explained.
“But it never is because all eyes, cameras, telescopes etc all have optical aberrations, particularly from the outer lens (or cornea in this case).
“The twin is ‘operated on’ thousands of times until the PSF is shrunk as small as possible. That is then given to the patient during Lasik.”