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How it works

The VisionFinder, created by senior Jackie Lim, Frank Mai ’15, Natalya Shelby ’15 and Rose Hong Truong ’15 for their  senior design project, works like a phoropter, the optometric diagnostic device. 

The full-scale phoropter shows the patient a variety of prescriptions while the optometrist asks for feedback on which looks best. The VisionFinder works in the same way, except that it’s contained in a plastic shell light enough to be held by a small child.

A reel on the front — reminiscent of the image disc in the classic View-Master toy — is rotated to move a dial containing different lenses to find the optimal prescription. The patient holds the VisionFinder and looks through a small hole to see which option looks the clearest. 

Aside from the obvious size difference, the VisionFinder also differs vastly in cost. A phoropter can cost thousands of dollars, while the VisionFinder prototypes were made for about $80 each — a figure Truong said she expects would drop if the device were mass-produced.

It also doesn’t require batteries or electricity, which could be especially helpful in remote locations or developing countries.

The team — dubbed Vision Vanguard — has taken the device on a trip to Mexico with volunteers from , as well as to a clinic in San Jose. Prototypes are being used in India and New York. 

The device also won the $3,000 Poverty Alleviation Award during the Graduate School of Management’s .

The elderly man had walked miles through the rain forest to get a pair of eyeglasses, only to go away empty-handed. 

Rose Hong Truong ’15 was there, in Ecuador, as a �ٺ���Ƶ freshman spending a . A group of medical students from other universities had set up a makeshift clinic, but it was closing — and all the optometry equipment had been packed away. There were plenty of glasses, but no way to test the man’s vision to determine his prescription. 

“Meeting the old man when I was 18, it really affected me and I never forgot it,” she said. “But I never thought to solve it until I was a junior and I was 21, and then suddenly it just hit me: This is the right thing to do.”

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Quest turns into senior design project 

She turned her quest into her senior design project in , and, working with three of her classmates, created an eye-examination tool that is not only convenient but relatively inexpensive to build and thus ideal for developing countries. 

It’s called the VisionFinder, a hand-held device manufactured on campus for less than $100, inspired by the classic View-Master toy that “plays” a reel of three-dimensional images, a different one appearing every time you press a lever.

The VisionFinder functions like a , the optometrist’s tool that shows a patient how the world would look through different lenses. 

A portable version useful for developing nations

“We took that large device and we shrank it down into this tiny travel size,” Truong said.

It was unique enough to spur the team to file for a provisional patent, and Truong said she hopes she’ll find a nonprofit organization or foundation to adopt the technology.

“We’re doing our best to give it away,” said Truong, who is from San Jose and graduated last spring. “We don’t want it to sit on a shelf.”

First priority is helping people

She said she passed on a potential deal with a startup that had capital but no infrastructure to deliver eyeglasses to developing countries. Her first priority is helping people, not making money — an ideal she said her teammates share, as do many others in the biomedical engineering major.

‘We’re doing our best to give it away. We don’t want it to sit on a shelf.’

— Rose Hong Truong

, an associate professor who oversees the biomedical engineering senior design program, said most senior design projects are developed with nonprofit organizations in mind, say, the  or the  — even if each project helps only one patient.

There’s often no way to turn those small-scale solutions into something that could be widely marketed, Passerini said.

“Making money is not the main objective of senior design,” Passerini said. “In the real world that’s often one of the main drivers.”

Testing and feedback

Truong’s group was unique in that its project solved a need identified by the students, and it started six months early to have enough time to test and get feedback.

Most teams sprint through the development and testing of their prototypes, and then call it quits when they go their separate ways after graduation, Passerini said.

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Moving on to the next project

Truong said her team has sold three VisionFinders to a foundation and a clinic, and doubts the team will make any more after those have been completed.

After all, the  the team has been using is meant for students, and Truong joked that by now she could probably make the VisionFinder in her sleep.

She said she is eager to move on to new projects. Her next idea, a portable projector powered by a smartphone, was “a bit too easy.”

She said she’s going to try her hand at building a pendant that would sync with a mobile app and indicate ovulation cycles for a friend who is trying to have another baby.