CES 2025: Soliddd Vision Correction for Macular Degeneration

Allison interviews Motti Attia from Soliddd about their technology to improve vision for those suffering from macular degeneration. Soliddd has a new kind of electronic eyeglasses that beam light in parallel rays to the retina. The key here is that the rays illuminate a smaller version of the same image multiplied 64 times in a 8×8 grid pattern across the entire retina, from the center and outward to the periphery. By doing so, the image impinges on undamaged areas of the retina which are typically away from the center. The visual cortex can then assemble the multiple images into one clear and sharply focused image without distortion. Soliddd smart glasses are in development and are designed to be lightweight and feel like normal eyeglasses.

Learn more a https://soliddd.com/

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Transcript of Interview:

Allison: My mother had macular degeneration and this is a degenerative disease of the retina where you start to lose your central vision over time. It runs in my family and other family members as well, so I was very interested in solid vision who are working on some glasses to maybe help people be able to see better who have macular degeneration. And I’m here with Motti Attia, and he’s going to tell us a little bit about this product. Can I hold it?

Motti Attia: Alison, thank you for your interest. What Soliddd is doing is to develop smart glasses that would help people with partial damage to the retina like macular degeneration, help them with true vision correction to restore sight.

Allison: So it’s through smart glasses, and I think you’ve got some little displays here to talk about what it is. Yeah, now from a question Steve asked earlier when we did our preamble, I understand this is glasses that have basically a display on the inside of the glasses. So if you’re wearing these, you wouldn’t be able to see through it for now, but what’s in that display?

Motti Attia: Before we talk about the product, before we talk about the technology, let’s talk a little bit about the human brain. So what we discovered, and I’m simplifying it, that much like the way our two eyes create a stereotactic image, we look with two eyes and in our brain we see one image, although we see it in 3D. You can accomplish that in one eye on the retina. So what we are doing, we are projecting 64 tiles of the same image in focus, that’s the trick, in focus to the retina. And then the brain, even a healthy retina, the brain would take the 64 images and the visual cortex would reconstruct one full image.

Allison: So you talk about in focus, I have so many questions, you talk about in focus, in focus for me and in focus for you is different. How do you do that in these glasses? Is that back to the details again?

Motti Attia: We can do the details. So think about it, if I manage to bypass your pupil, it’s not dependent on your eyesight.

Allison: Oh, right.

Motti Attia: So you’re creating images that are a size that is smaller than the pupil. And what we do, and you can see it here now, I’ll try to explain the product for you. You can see it here on picture number one, we have smart glasses with two cameras facing out and we capture this image and we manipulate it in such a way that your retina would see it in focus. So if you think about it, we capture it here and I am going to project it on this side of the retina. If I capture it on the right side, it would be on the left side. Now I have to project on the left side of my retina. So I have to manipulate the image to be like that. And add to that, we had invented this flat optics, flat telephoto optics that allow us to do the projection. So now what’s happened, we project 64 tiles in focus to the retina and we have redundancy. So if part of your retina is damaged, the brain can still reconstruct it to one full image.

Allison: So with 64, it’s bound to have enough information to get you at least one part of your eye that’s functional?

Motti Attia: More than one, more than one. Because we also have, and I’m going very technical now, if you know a little bit about the retina, the resolution of the periphery of the retina is much lower than the central retina. So to get good resolution, we need to project more than one image.

Allison: Oh, I see, I see. That makes sense. So at this point, we can see this is at a prototype stage. Obviously it looks very promising. Have you been testing this with real human beings?

Motti Attia: Yeah, that’s what I was about to tell you. So what you see here that I’ll show you in a minute, okay, it’s our first prototype. We called it the desktop prototype. And we tested it with about more than 30 patients with macular degeneration. And 95% of them saw improvement in the reading speed. Some of them couldn’t read and started reading. Some of them read, but they read faster using this technology.

Allison: Wow, that’s astonishing. I understand that it’s really hard to get used to not being able to see in the middle because you keep trying to look at it. And when you look at it, then you can’t see it anymore. So I could see how the speed would be, you’d have to keep training yourself to look off axis normally.

Motti Attia: Surprisingly enough, even for healthy retina, the brain adjusts so fast.

Allison: I’m sorry, I was talking about without this tool. If I’m trying to read and I can’t see in my central vision, I’ve got to keep looking away in order to see things. And that’s really hard for the brain to go, no, no, no, I’m trained to look straight at it. But with this, you don’t have to do that.

Motti Attia: So people ask me to explain it in my lay language. I would tell people, imagine you have a camera that a few of the sensors in the middle are not working. That’s actually what’s happening in macular degeneration.

Allison: So in the desktop model, what we’re looking at here is taped down to cardboard, but he’s got one of the displays sitting right here.

Motti Attia: There is a display with the special optics over it, and we’re driving it through the computer.

Allison: Can we see what it sees or anything?

Motti Attia: You can see. I’ll show you what you have to do.

Allison: Okay.

Motti Attia: So first you have to take off your glasses and you bring your eyes here.

Allison: So he’s putting his eye right over it.

Motti Attia: And then as you see a picture and you tell me what do you see, you know this lady, I see. And if you go up, you start seeing that we actually project 64 times.

Allison: Okay, I’m going to give this a try. We need to change shares or can we slide it over?

Motti Attia: I would like to bring it closer to you.

Allison: Okay. So instead of using glasses, it’s basically just taped down. And so I’m going to put my eye right down on this. All right.

Motti Attia: Get closer, get closer.

Motti Attia: Closer.

Allison: Okay. So I’m looking at a woman.

Motti Attia: You know her?

Allison: That’s probably Taylor Swift is my guess.

Motti Attia: Correct.

Allison: All right.

Motti Attia: Now lift your head and slowly, slowly, slowly.

Allison: Okay, I’m lifting.

Motti Attia: You start seeing the dots?

Allison: Yes. Now I can see the individual. Oh, wow. Oh, that’s so weird. Steve, you got to look at this. That is really, really interesting. So I…

Motti Attia: I perceived it at the beginning. When I saw it the first time, I didn’t get what’s happening, you know.

Allison: Yeah, you do have to back away to start understanding you’re looking at 64 individual images. I got to look at it again. Okay, I’m up real close. As I come up.

Motti Attia: That’s really…

Allison: I know that’s terrible for audio, maybe interesting for video, but it is…

Motti Attia: I mean, video is hard to show it because actually it happens in your brain, in your visual cortex.

Allison: Oh, that’s interesting. Well, we might have to train the…

Motti Attia: I was trying to capture it to explain it to friends and I realized what… I don’t know how to…

Allison: Actually, I think that might make some interesting video to help understand that it is my brain doing it, not my eyes doing it, not the sensors that are my eyes.

Motti Attia: Yeah, correct. Yeah.

Allison: So you’ve got a prototype now. Do you have any idea when you’re supposed to go into production or…

Motti Attia: You know, technology is challenging. Our plan right now shows that it will happen in the spring, summer of this year.

Allison: You’re saying this year you’ll have a product?

Motti Attia: Yeah, yeah. This model we hope would be available in the spring or summer of this year.

Allison: So how many millions of pre-orders do you have?

Motti Attia: We don’t have millions.

Allison: You will.

Motti Attia: So we… Our founder is Neil Weinstock, he’s very conservative. So he first wanted to see that it’s working. He’s now raising the money and first we’ll test the prototype and then we’ll go to production.

Allison: This is spectacular. Macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in the world. So this is a problem just itching to be solved.

Motti Attia: I’m not good at the numbers, but I think here in the US we’re talking about 20 million people suffering from macular degeneration.

Allison: I live in fear of it. I actually have dry macular degeneration right now, which is not all dry turns into wet. Wet is the bad one, but all wet was at one time dry. So I live in fear of this. So maybe this will be all working by the time I get it.

Motti Attia: Am I allowed to give you advice?

Allison: Sure.

Motti Attia: Just keep doing follow-up with your ophthalmologist?

Allison: I do. I go every six months to a retina specialist and I take all the vitamins that they know can help. So, I mean, it might never happen.

Motti Attia: One day they would find a cure, but right now they know how to slow the progression of macular degeneration. They don’t know how to cure it.

Allison: That’s right. So if people want to find out about Solid Vision, it’s S-O-L-I-D-D-D, vision. And is it solidddvision.com?

Motti Attia: So it’s Solid, S-O-L-I-D-D-D, solid3d.com.

Allison: Say that one more time.

Motti Attia: It’s Solid, S-O-L-I-D-D-D.com.

Allison: There we go. Got it. Thank you.

Motti Attia: There is one reason for that, because the beginning of this company, this is a startup of 15 years. So in the early days, they were trying to develop 3D technology for 3D movies.

Allison: Oh, wow. Okay. I like it. I like it. Now I’ll remember the name for sure. Well, thank you very much, Motti. This is fantastic.

Motti Attia: It’s a great pleasure. Thank you.